When Nick Piccininni got the call in 2020 from Yonder Mountain String Band to sub in for some shows in place of mandolin player Jacob Jolliff, he wasn’t expecting it to be a big deal.
“At the time, I didn’t think anything would necessarily come of it,” Piccininni recalled in a recent phone interview. “I guess, my main hope was that it might help my career in terms of just rubbing shoulders with the right people.”
What it’s become is a chance to become a long-term member of Yonder Mountain String Band, one of the most popular acts on the “jamgrass” scene. At the end of 2020, Jolliff left the group and Piccininni accepted an invitation to join the band.
Ironically, Piccininni didn’t know much about Yonder Mountain before subbing for Jolliff. But he was friends with Allie Kral, the group’s fiddle player (who has since left the band), and that put him on the group’s radar when the need for a fill-in mandolin player came up.
“I knew a few tunes and I had heard their name a lot,” said Piccininni. “I was running in a very, like, traditional bluegrass (circle). So really, even though both, you can say that Yonder is bluegrass and it’s just a different brand of it, but it’s just like two different worlds, really. You’ve got the jam world that they were in (and a separate traditional bluegrass scene). So, I wasn’t really exposed to it a lot, just had the faintest idea of who they were, really.
“I can definitely think of multiple people that this is like a dream gig for them. It is for me as well because I always wanted to tour and I love the music,” he said. “I love what Yonder is doing. I love the style and it really suits everything I ever wanted.”
The parting of ways with Jolliff marked the second major personnel change for Yonder Mountain String Band since 2014. That year, mandolin player Jeff Austin left after a decade and a half of being a central figure in the group that he co-founded with guitarist/singer Adam Aijala, banjo player Dave Johnston and bassist Ben Kaufmann in 1998 in Nederland, Colorado.
But over time, the musical interests of Austin and the other three members of Yonder Mountain began to diverge, and it became clear that Austin needed to follow his own musical path. Aijala, Johnston and Kaufmann, after some deliberation over the future of Yonder Mountain, moved forward, bringing on Kral and Jolliff and making the 2015 album, “Black Sheep.”
A second album with that lineup, “Love. Ain’t Love,” followed in 2017. But as the group continued on, it became apparent that Jolliff, a virtuoso on mandolin, wasn’t the right fit.
“I think the main thing with Jake is he’s on a music trajectory that’s a lot different from where Yonder’s at,” said Aijala, who joined Piccininni for the interview. “He really is that good. I would imagine if you have that level of ability that playing with a band like us would probably be either boring or uninspiring (although) he never said those words to me.
“He’s an awesome dude,” Aijala said of Jolliff. “There was no ill will at all in that departure. I think it was a natural progression, an evolution, for both Yonder and for him.”
In Piccininni, Yonder Mountain not only found a capable mandolin player, but a musician who also plays guitar, dobro and fiddle, and is a strong vocalist. And Piccininni quickly made his presence felt on Yonder Mountain’s current album, “Get Yourself Outside,” which was released in February 2022.
Even though he was the “new guy,” Piccininni was very involved in the songwriting for “Get Yourself Outside.” That was the intention from the start of the writing process.
“I feel like we encouraged him to have as much (input) as he can,” Aijala said. “I think he’s a great singer and the songs are good. So why wouldn’t you encourage that? I mean, I’m about having the best band we can have. There’s nothing really personal in it for me except that we as a group stand to have a better time and maybe have a better career even if we’re putting our best foot forward. I don’t need the attention, the personal attention, for me specifically. The band is the most important and the biggest thing.”
For Piccininni, the biggest adjustment may have been learning to write as a collective.
“It’s kind of weird to say this, but I’d never co-written any songs before then. So that was a new experience,” he said. “That comes with its own set of (challenges), kind of feeling a little timid, because you’re kind of baring your soul there. … But I think that they made me feel comfortable about it. They did kind of put it out there that ‘Hey, yeah, if we think it sucks, we’re going to tell you.’ And there’s kind of a comfort in that, too, of just going all right, they’re going to be honest. So I didn’t find it was too hard to, I threw out a lot of different ideas that I had, just little pieces of songs, some songs that were almost finished, and I was kind of like ‘Here, you can listen to this, and if you think there’s anything there, we can work on it.’”
In addition to bringing some new elements to the songwriting, Aijala said Piccininni has brought a bit different feel to Yonder Mountain’s music with his mandolin playing.
“I think especially him being on the mandolin, where he puts the chop in the rhythm, like with a drummer, if you really break down a beat, there are actually some drummers that play on the front of the beat, some that play on the back of the beat and others that are kind of right in the middle, and Nick has a very specific place where he places it, for the most part,” Aijala said. “I like where it sits. It’s a tiny more laid back than normal.
“This feels more settled. Nick is less prone to pushing,” he added. “We’re less prone to pushing the rhythm. And I think the more shows (we play), the more comfortable we get.”
Yonder Mountain have been busy touring throughout the past couple of years, and shows are booked through May, with some festival dates set for the summer.
Aijala said Yonder Mountain’s shows have undergone a slight change as touring resumed post-pandemic. The band has been famous for playing completely different song sets each night for a week or more on tours. But that is changing somewhat, partly because Aijala and his bandmates reassessed some songs that had been vehicles for jamming. Those songs now appear in sets in much shorter form, which means the band is playing certain songs more frequently.
“We had a big reflection during the pandemic, and talking with Ben and Dave, talking about, just passing around solos doesn’t really make the song a jammer anymore, nor does it make it better,” Aijala said. “We used to do that with ‘Casualty,’ and we do it once in awhile where we’re passing around the solos. (There are) songs that I can think of that we need to maybe stop doing that, and there are other ones where we don’t do that at all anymore and they’re three- or four-minute songs now. I think that is also contributing to maybe having to play one song twice in a week or a couple of songs.”
Yonder Mountain String Band
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday, April 5
WHERE: 191 Toole, 191 E. Toole Avenue, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $35
INFO: www.ticketmaster.com
www.yoondermountain.com
This article appears in Mar 14-21, 2024.
