PHOTO COURTESY OF JANEY AND THE GROWLERZ - Janey and the Growlerz wearing masks. From Left: Blake Kelley, Janey Potter, Jon Love, Rod Holke-Farnam and Joel Love. Photo courtesy of Janey and the Growlerz.

Janet and the Growlerz debuted in Marshall County on Sunday at the Central Iowa Fairgrounds.

The five-piece cover band with two members from Grundy Center and three from Reinbeck were part of the county’s free summer concert series.

The band, consisting of singer Janey Potter, guitarist Rod Holke-Farnam, bassist Jon Love, keyboard/guitar player Joel Love and drummer Blake Kelley, was formed “kind of by accident,” according to Holke-Farnam.

“My friend who isn’t in the band anymore was asked to put together a band to play for a private party,” Holke-Farnam said. “So we practiced and did the gig, and then we were like ‘Hey this is really good.'”

The band initially went by the name The Growlers because they were rehearsing in a brewery and they were surrounded by them. That quickly changed, though, after they found out a different band carried the same name and had a little more name recognition. The Growlers are a surf rock band from California with seven albums released since 2009.

The lineup has changed just a bit, Holke-Farnam said, since the group’s inception — and with it so has the music the group has performed.

“We kind of do a little bit of everything,” Holke-Farnam said. “We do Deep Purple to Adele and everything in-between.”

Holke-Farnam, a teacher at Hawkeye Community College, began as a blues guitarist and is a big fan of funk music. Potter grew up singing 1990s country music, or “classic country,” and bassist Jon Love is a fan of funk as well. So it’s no surprise that the range of covers the band can perform is large. They try to keep a focus on what’s popular to make it easier for audiences to dance and sing along — including a lot of ’80s covers of female singers and a cover of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” surprising given their musical backgrounds. Holke-Farnam said the song’s basic groove was workable and the group took it from there.

“Having Jon’s dad in the band, we have people in their 20s and people in their 60s,” Holke-Farnam said. “So we try to cater to everyone’s style of music.”

But what is the schedule like for a band that mostly plays private parties in a pandemic? Well, he said it was a very difficult start to the year. With bars and restaurants closing down in March and not many people hosting parties during the late spring/early summer, Holke-Farnam said the band didn’t know if they were going to play at all in 2020.

Then an outside performance on July 10 in Grundy Center and a private party show July 24 showed the group they could perform at outside venues with social distancing. Since then, the phones have been ringing. They have booked multiple shows during the next couple of months and jumped at the opportunity to come to Marshall County and hopefully spread their audience.

“We like playing for people who like to have a good time,” Holke-Farnam said. “So if you do, then come on out.”

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Contact Noah Rohlfing at 641-753-6611 or nrohlfing@timesrepublican.com.