Andy Tullis / The Bulletin4 Peaks Music Festival, featuring plenty of jam bands, is this weekend.

John Skehan wasn’t looking for a place for his band, veteran Americana combo Railroad Earth, to record a new album.

Heck, he wasn’t even looking for a piano. In fact, his first instinct when he heard about the baby grand that Dean Rickard had for sale was to run in the opposite direction.

“A friend of a friend came home one day and said, ‘I met this person and her husband’s a musician. He’s a drummer and he has a studio in his basement and he has this really nice-looking baby grand piano. He wants to sell it and he doesn’t want much money for it,’” Skehan said in a phone interview Monday. “My first thought was, ‘OK, I shouldn’t get involved in this right now because it might be nice and I’ll want to buy it and I just can’t afford it.”

His second thought? “‘Oh, he has a studio in his basement. Big deal,’” Skehan said. “Everybody has a studio in their basement nowadays.’”

Turns out the piano was nice and the studio, located in Rickard’s home in Knowlton, N.J., was even nicer, professionally done and fitted with all the gear needed to record a great album. So months later, when the six members of Railroad Earth began discussing where to make their next record, Skehan — who had dragged his heels on buying the piano — suggested Rickard’s basement.

Skehan’s band mates agreed, and Railroad Earth — which will headline this weekend’s 4 Peaks Music Festival near Tumalo — set up shop to make “Last of the Outlaws,” the sixth full-length since the band formed in New Jersey in 2001.

One listen reveals a band exploring new musical avenues; prominent in many of the songs is the piano Skehan had eyeballed months before.

“We began using it on the record, perhaps more so than we had on any of our previous recordings,” he said. “Just because it fell into some of the music we were working on. There wasn’t any real intention.”

Known for its adventurous brand of bluegrass with Celtic overtones, Railroad Earth shifts ever further from its roots on “Outlaws.” The opening song, “Chasin’ A Rainbow,” has an easygoing ‘70s vibe. The title track is a lithe, jazz-inflected show-stopper that stretches more than six minutes. And the centerpiece is a 21-minute-long, seven-movement suite that Railroad Earth likens to a requiem mass, string-band style. It’s a beast of a piece that highlights the band’s distaste for sitting still, stylistically.

Rickard’s spacious studio, which allowed the band to set up, play and record in the same room together, gave them the freedom to roam, Skehan said.

“That was a big part of this record and the process behind it. We felt like we were free to just do whatever, to try something completely new,” he said. “The time and the space that we were in (were just right).”

As for the piano? After hearing “Outlaws,” Rickard decided he wanted to keep it. That was more than a year ago.

And then, a month or so ago, Skehan ran into him again and asked again. This time, the deal was done.

“It’s in my house,” Skehan said. “I got it.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0377, bsalmon@bendbulletin.com