One day in late September, the singer and multi-instrumentalist Caroline Keys sent a demo recording to her two bandmates in the folk-rock trio Junior. The song, a bittersweet and bluesy waltz, was called “My Band is Moving to Butte.” The song was not fictional — later that fall, multi-instrumentalists and singers Hermina Jean and Jenny Lynn Fawcett packed up their belongings in Missoula and headed east in search of more affordable living in Butte, complicating the band’s existence.
That geographical splintering represents just one of several challenges Junior has faced over the past few years, the Montana Free Press reports. The group formed in 2019, and soon thereafter the COVID-19 pandemic stymied efforts to record and tour. Then, last summer, Keys was diagnosed with cancer, and spent much of the past six months traveling between Montana and Memphis, where she underwent treatment.
Yet Junior persevered through the chaos and hardship. The group’s 2021 album, “Warm Buildings,” captures its knack for melodic hooks, captivating harmonies, rich instrumentation and vivid tales of Montana. The group has toured significantly to support the album. And this winter Keys returned to Montana in good health.
This month, Junior will perform the group’s first gigs since August, including a show at Pissers Palace in Butte on Feb. 3 and the Missoula VFW on Feb 10. The band’s upcoming shows will also include a rotating cast of additional musicians, including pedal steel guitarists Eric Heywood and Gibson Hartwell and bassists Clark Grant and Jeff Turman.
We caught up with Junior for a cheery early morning Zoom chat a couple of days before the band began rehearsing for the upcoming shows. Read along as the members discuss the group’s enigmatic origins, the “talent drain” plaguing Missoula, the glories of playing in small Montana towns and more.
MTFP: Tell me a bit about how Junior formed.
Hermina Jean: We decided to start a Patsy Cline cover band with a bunch of friends for a Halloween show [in 2018], and called it Patsy Grime. It was our way of getting through a winter. We played one show. At some point I decided I wanted to go on tour in Europe, and so I needed to come up with a band. I asked everyone in Patsy Grime if they wanted to be in the band — Caroline and Jenny said yes. And then we started this band. I think we got our photos taken before we had a practice.
MTFP: So did you tour Europe?
Caroline Keys: We’re still working on it [laughs]. Junior played our first show on March 8, 2019. Then, on March 8, 2020, we played our last show [before the COVID-19 pandemic].
We recorded the basic tracks for our record in January 2020. There was a whole lot of space that we needed to fill, and we were able to do that remotely. I think that speaks to the staying power of this band — we’re always climbing up a hill.
MTFP? What does the name Junior refer to?
Hermina Jean: We named our band after a basset hound. He was kind of our mascot for a while. It felt like a solid, almost gender-neutral word for me.
MTFP: You haven’t played a show since August. When did Junior start to rehearse again for these February gigs?
Caroline Keys: This coming Sunday. It’s gonna be great [laughs]. I play in a couple different groups, and this is kind of the norm at this point. Bands that used to be based in Missoula are no longer all based in Missoula. I played a show with Worst Feelings and Les Duck last week. Those bands have members in Helena, Butte, around St. Ignatius, Missoula. It’s not unusual. There is a talent drain. People are leaving Missoula, and it’s not unusual to play a show where the preparation feels hurried. That’s the way it is. We’re not the only ones experiencing this.
MTFP: Is it fair to say that inversely, in Butte for example, a musical community is coalescing or growing?
Hermina Jean: With all respect to the community that’s been here a long time, right? It feels like our friends are all moving to Butte. But this community has so much built-in support and enthusiasm for live music. People really show up. They fill that [donations] hat at every show. It’s been a really good experience for me to be here and to play here. And yeah, it’s been sad to see Missoula change.
MTPF: Junior has played shows in parts of the state that aren’t necessarily cultural hubs. Do you get a different vibe when you play in smaller places?
Hermina Jean: I feel like maybe we’re more appreciated because there are just fewer artists performing. It’s not taken for granted that you’re gonna have an unending number of bands that are willing to play, and play for free.
Caroline Keys: We’ve played in Eureka and we have played at Bynum and we’ve played in Butte, we’ve played in Dillon.
My old bluegrass band, we played in White Sulphur Springs. We were musicians in residence for several days and played shows in the schools and communities. We got invited to this old woman’s house who had boobs down to her knees. She made us lunch and played the accordion. She babysat everyone in the town, and so she had a toddler on one knee and the accordion on the other knee, and we were just playing traditional folk tunes with this woman.
How do I have the privilege to get invited into this incredibly intimate space and this small community? Music is an amazing ambassador itself. Playing music in Montana, I feel like I’m getting away with something, that I have such a rich life and that it’s not in any sort of industry city.
MTFP: I gather you’re working on new material. Are there big shifts, thematically or musically, in those songs?
Hermina Jean: It’s been a really big transitional year and a half for this band. Family stuff and health stuff. That’s definitely shining through on these new songs.
Jenny Lynn Fawcett: And changing relationships and changing cities. Packing up and moving.
MTPF: Can you tell me a bit about your writing process? Do you each bring songs to the table?
Jenny Lynn Fawcett: When we first started, we played a lot of songs that already had lives in other [projects], and then we performed them as Junior. So in a weird way, it felt like we were covering Stellarondo songs or Hermina Jean songs or Caroline Keys & the Lanesplitters songs. As we’ve been playing together for so long and discovering sort of our own musical sensibilities and how we collaborate, our sound has transitioned as well. I feel like this new batch of songs really feel like Junior songs in a different way than a lot of the material we’ve already recorded. But that’s cool.
Hermina Jean: We usually write our own and bring them to the group, and then we help each other come up with different parts. And Caroline and Jenny are both harmonizing geniuses, so they start figuring out the arrangements. I write really basic folk songs and I always love it when they come in and they’re like, “What about adding this little thing here?” It just changes the whole song. It makes it better.
As much as we write our own songs, we’ve also learned how to collaborate for real. And it’s been really fun and really therapeutic. I would say we use our band as therapy pretty much all the time.
Jenny Lynn Fawcett: Let the record show that we all emphatically nodded [laughs]. We’re still trying to figure out how we rehearse and collaborate, now that two-thirds of us are here [in Butte]. To be honest, I don’t think we’ve ironed that out yet.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
