Gear Club Podcast

This week on Record of the Week, we dig into one of the most overlooked and mysterious songs connected to The Band: "Out of the Blue," tucked away on The Last Waltz Suite. Robbie Robertson's lead vocal, the unusual arrangement, and the lack of clear information about who actually played on the track all make this song a real puzzle.
John Agnello and Stewart Lerman sit down with David Mansfield - violinist and multi-instrumentalist for Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue - to dig into the mystery. We discuss Robbie Robertson's voice and his role in The Band's harmonies, the Garth Hudson keyboard signatures buried in the track, why the rhythm section doesn't sound like Levon Helm or Rick Danko, and what the song tells us about the final days of one of rock's greatest groups.
We also get into The Last Waltz recording sessions, John Simon's revelation that nearly every note in the film was replaced in post-production, the relationship between The Last Waltz and Bob Dylan's Renaldo and Clara, and the Rolling Thunder Revue's place in Dylan and The Band's shared history.
0:00 Intro: Record of the Week
0:12 Discovering "Out of the Blue" on The Last Waltz Soundtrack
1:26 The Mystery of Robbie Robertson's Solo Vocal
2:22 Who Is Actually Playing on This Track?
3:30 Why Are No Other Band Members Singing?
4:06 The No-Show Sessions at Shangri-La
4:49 Analyzing the Rhythm Section: Levon Helm and Rick Danko
6:43 Robbie Robertson or Richard Manuel? The Vocal Question
7:34 Rolling Thunder, Before the Flood, and the Band's Final Days
8:11 Bob Dylan's Contentious Rights Battle Over The Last Waltz
10:01 The Tension Between Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm
11:11 Identifying Garth Hudson's Musical Influence on the Track
13:03 The Post-Production Secret: Every Note Replaced in The Last Waltz
14:12 Outro: Final Thoughts

In this episode John and Stewart sit down for a chat with friend and mentor Rick Chertoff. Rick is a Producer and songwriter whose career started in A&R for Clive Davis's newly minted Arista records in 1974. From there, he went on to be senior VP of A&R at Columbia records, started his own Blue Gorilla record Label at Polygram, and all the while produced songs and albums for Cyndi Lauper, The Band, Joan Osborne, Sophie B Hawkins, and many others. In this interview Rick discusses his path through the music industry, gets in depth about the writing and recording of Cyndi Lauper's smash first album She's So Unusual, and shares behind the scenes stories from a career filled with hit records.

In this episode John and Stewart sit down for a chat with friend and mentor Rick Chertoff. Rick is a Producer and songwriter whose career started in A&R for Clive Davis's newly minted Arista records in 1974. From there he went on to be senior VP of A&R at Columbia records, started his own Blue Gorilla record Label at Polygram, and all the while produced songs and albums for The Kinks, Air Supply, Cyndi Lauper, The Band, Joan Osborne, Sophie B Hawkins, and many others. In this interview Rick discusses his path through the music industry, gets in depth about the writing and recording of Cyndi Lauper's smash first album She's So Unusual, and shares behind the scenes stories from a career filled with hit records.

In this episode John, Stewart, and myself sit down with Tad Kubler, best known as guitarist and songwriter for the best bar band in the world, The Hold Steady. John and I have both made records with the band and it was awesome to catch up with Tad about gear, guitars, and all things Hold Steady. We also got into Tad's production and engineering work, his burgeoning home studio, and his writing and demoing process.

For our centennial episode, we took a trip down memory lane and revisited all the interviews we've shared over the years. We gathered some of our team's favorite moments—stories that inspired us, moved us, and reminded us why we love making this show. We're incredibly proud of everything we've created together, and we hope you can feel that joy and gratitude in this special episode. Thanks for being here, and we hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed putting it together!