Hello Daniel,
Thanks for getting in touch! Wow, I surely want to see that wild-west website!
Great questions you have, let me help you out here.
The event calendar is to be used to sign up to an event without having to make a payment.
This is possible with the free The Events Calendar and Event Tickets plugins.
Event Tickets will allow you to collect free RSVPs / registrations from users. With this you can collect one name and email address per registration batch, meaning if a person sends 3 RSVPs at once (basically signals 3 attendees) you can collect the details of the person making the registration.
are we able to obtain information from them on how best contact them?
If you would like to collect more information than that or if you would like to collect information for each and every person registered, then you will need Event Tickets Plus. With ET+ you can set up extra fields (text, radio, checkbox, dropdown) to collect further information.
Are you able to cap the amount of people who sign up
Yes, you can set an available stock for both RSVPs and Tickets as well.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have further questions or if you need more clarification.
Cheers,
Andras