CHEST FEVER ANNOUNCES NEW LIVE ALBUM: THE 21ST CENTURY LAST WALTZ – LIVE AT MASSEY HALL
Blind Owl Records and Chest Fever are excited to announce their upcoming release of The 21st Century LAST WALTZ – Live At Massey Hall, a live album that captures the five-hour celebration of The Band's music at Canada's premier concert venue on November 18, 2023.
The performance brought together participants from The Band’s The Last Waltz, other acclaimed Canadian and American songwriters, and contemporary artists from different generations and backgrounds. Instead of recreating the iconic show song-for-song, the production incorporated new musical arrangements, creating what Chest Fever calls The 21st Century Last Waltz. But the story behind the show began long before Chest Fever stood under Massey Hall’s vaulted ceiling and scalloped arches.
In November of 2022, the band performed a show at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern. It was a sold-out event, and it also brought together a burgeoning group of Canadian and American musicians with a shared love and history with The Band. Since then, the scope of production and collaboration have only grown.
Their transition from the Horseshoe Tavern to a sold-out Massey Hall in just less than a year wasn't something accomplished by themselves. Rather, it was built up from the bottom by a community who believed in their vision. One of those people was Tyrell Lisson, a crucial producer, Band historian, and performer, who helped bridge the gap between the Americans and the Canadians and assembled many of the artists featured throughout the Massey Hall show.
Following Robbie Robertson’s passing in the summer of 2023, Chest Fever’s Last Waltzes have also taken on a greater purpose: For their Waltz at Massey Hall, the band partnered with North York General Hospital, a Toronto hospital that specializes in men's prostate cancer care. Robbie Robertson had passed from the same illness just months before the concert, and the partnership served as a meaningful way to honor his legacy.
If The Band’s original concert documented a quintessentially 20th century experience, Chest Fever approached the material through a distinctly 21st century lens. According to the band’s de-facto leader Dan Cervantes, the vision was never to replace or replicate the 1976 concert, but build upon the spirit of collaboration, under the same vein of Mad Dogs & Englishman or The Concert for Bangladesh. With musicians traveling from both sides of the border, the production became what he jokingly describes as "Yanks and Maple Leafs".
Performed on the 45th anniversary of the Scorsese-directed film, The 21st Century Last Waltz features artists whose relationships with The Band stretch back decades, including Cindy Cashdollar (local friend & collaborator), Scarlet Rivera (violinist for Bob Dylan), Colin Linden (lyrical & musical collaborator), Sylvia Tyson (Hall of Fame songwriter), Albert Lee (Levon Helm & Eric Clapton collaborator) and Bill Avis (road manager).
Just as important, The 21st Century Last Waltz spotlights a generation of artists, many of whom have risen to popularity on social media and stages far and wide, including—but not limited to—The Pairs (folk trio from Ontario), John Muirhead (singer-songwriter), Nicole Cerminara (guitarist & songwriter), and Sugarmill Slim (Vocalist & harmonica). Assembling the multi-national, multi-generational cast thus required an extraordinary amount of coordination. In fact, it was nearly impossible to pull off.
"It was kicking and screaming to the finish line for that show, and there were a lot of people who didn't think we could do it," recalls Cervantes. "We were told, You should pack it up and not do this, boys, this doesn't seem like a good idea. And then we said, No, we can fucking do it. And we did it."
In Roots Music Canada, Presley Overgoor praised the performance as "not your average tribute concert in the slightest,” concluding that Chest Fever had delivered “the best tribute act ever”. Cervantes, the primary guitarist and one of the lead singers of the band, remembers how much effort pulling something like that off required: "I was also a producer of the event, which meant I was the first one to the venue at eight in the morning, and I was the last one to leave the venue at five in the morning," he says. "I spent maybe nine months producing the event."
Yet, the challenge was worth the risk. When asked why the show carried so much weight, Cervantes responds simply: "Well, because it was Massey Hall. It represented a massive leap for myself and for my partner in the band Jody Bagley."
Bagley, who played piano and sings on almost every track of the album, notes, "There were a lot of emotions that night—a lot of excitement and nerves definitely going into it, especially knowing how amazing and legendary the venue was.” Since opening in 1894, Massey Hall has become Canada's famous concert hall. From Gershwin, to Bob Dylan to Rush, there couldn’t have been a more appropriate stage for the event.
One of the guest performers, Devin Cuddy (frontman of the Devin Cuddy Band and son of Jim Cuddy, frontman of Blue Rodeo), explains that "there's a shared love of something—an individual thing that happened in that room that night. I think that the people on the stage and in the crowd both recognized that and it added to the joy and the energy that was bouncing back and forth from the crowd on the stage."
That joy and energy bounced to the other performers too: “To be on that stage was a really exciting thing,” continues Bagley. “With all the guests we had, looking forward to playing with them was also kind of a surreal experience.”
Cindy Cashdollar, a masterful steel guitarist from Woodstock, corroborates: "The variety of artists was very impressive to me too. I thought that they [Chest Fever] did a great job in choosing the songs for each guest's vocals and instrumentation.”
Skye Wallace, a Canadian singer-songwriter and newcomer to Chest Fever's Last Waltz, was a prime example of this pairing; her rendition of "Dry Your Eyes" took the song from an often sentimental association to a bolder, PJ Harvey-like performance. Like many other singers that night, she brings a fresh perspective to the material, helping the event balance a deep reverence for The Band's legacy with an original 21st-century interpretation.
Yet while artists like Wallace helped carry the music into a new domain, the show still remained connected to its roots. Among those present was Bill Avis, whose history with “the boys” dates back to their era as The Hawks—more than a decade before he stood side stage at The Last Waltz in 1976. He later served as road manager for The Band, and remained a member of Levon Helm's inner circle until the end. Seated side stage throughout the evening, his story was one of many others who linked the original show and Chest Fever's reimagining.
“I was also very pleased to see Scarlett Rivera and Sylvia Tyson,” Cindy Cashdollar continues. “We had all done a tour many years ago, so it was kind of fun to come full circle.” Sylvia Tyson, a pioneering figure in Canadian folk music and former member of Ian & Sylvia, walked onto the stage at Massey Hall to a standing ovation. She joined the band for the performance of Ian & Sylvia’s popular song, “Four Strong Winds”, among others.
Cashdollar’s history with The Band also stretches back decades. "Growing up in Woodstock, I knew Levon, Garth, Rick and Richard very well. They were dear friends, and I also performed with them.” Reflecting on the music itself, she says, "It makes you feel so much when you hear these songs, because of the way they were performed, with such integrity and such musicality [...] It really was a special blend of people that came together that formed The Band.”
Thanks to Cashdollar’s collaboration, some of the original songs took on a more personal, unique sound, such as the Neil Young song, “Helpless”. “Marc Ford had learned to play the melody on the slide,” Cervantes remembers. "And then we saw Cindy Cashdollar, and he was like, Dude, I don't think I can. I shouldn't be playing slide. And Cindy was actually like, Well, no, you should. I think two slides could work really nice. I've done this before. And then it just came out and it was this beautiful thing.”
It’s a kind of authenticity that still draws in younger artists today. Many of the musicians who shared the stage on November 18th were born long after The Band’s famed show. "The Last Waltz was one of only a couple things that I remember being truly inspired by when I was younger," recalls Devin Cuddy. "Not just the music, but the people, the interviews, and just the way the whole thing was put together, and it sort of spawned a long lasting enthusiasm."
According to another guest, former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford, the enduring spirit of The Band can be found in the honesty of the music: "[The Band] were very down to earth and very real compared against the psychedelic background that was going on at the time," he says. "It deserves to be played again. It's important to celebrate that era of music where there weren't a lot of tricks, it was just people making music together and songs, great songs, and people collaborating. It’s what Ford calls “the humanness of it”, which holds an appeal so many years later.
That crucial aspect of musical collaboration extended through every aspect of the production. "There was a really beautiful energy, both on the stage and backstage," Cuddy remembers. "It was not your average feeling on stage, and it was very special in that way."
When preparing the live release, Cervantes stepped out of the shoes of bandleader and into the shoes of record producer, working carefully to preserve what happened on stage while ensuring listeners could hear every musical detail. Regarding the string section, Cervantes explains, "there was so much bleed [...] So we had to go and re-overdub the strings so that you could actually hear them. I had to call on my string and horn arranger, Jesse Audelo, who I have been working with now for ten years.”
Audelo, a saxophonist, composer, and musical arranger, was also tasked with composing the concert’s horn and string arrangements, which included a novel overture. “Dan had commissioned me to write something that was going to be unique to that show,” Audelo recalls. To do so, he worked alongside another featured performer that night: the original Last Waltz horns arranger and member of The Blues Brothers Tom "Bones" Malone. Sharing the 1976 show’s sheet music with Audelo, this helped inspire the new arrangements created specifically for the production.
The result became one of the highlights: "We had an incredible horn section,” recalls Bagley, citing Audelo and Malone’s work as one of the aspects he’s most excited for listeners to hear on the album. The same horn section also featured fellow Blues Brother and original SNL band member “Blue” Lou Marini, whose sax solos on “Such a Night” and “It Makes No Different” soared through the halls.
Despite all the hard work, time, and energy, Cervantes sees a show like Massey Hall as just one chapter in a much larger journey. But he also doesn’t sugar-coat anything: "It takes a lot out of me. It takes a lot out of everything," he says. "I've found a great amount of reciprocation from playing this music, and from the relationships that have grown and people that I've met. I put a lot of time and attention into it, and I think that time and attention has value."
And why is the music so worth it? “There's something very magic about it, for lack of a better term," Cervantes responds. "I've had some people be like, When are you gonna stop? You already did this, why are you doing that? I'm like, Well, it's not done. We've just scratched the surface.”
In a rather fitting conclusion to the story, Cervantes finally explains: "I don't think I'll ever be done playing The Band's music. I think I'll be playing The Band's music for the rest of my life. I don't think I chose it. I think it's chosen me. I won't run away from it."
Chest Fever is proud to announce the release of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," the first single and video coming this Friday, June 26th.
Watch "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" NOW on Youtube
Over the coming weeks, Blind Owl Records will also release exclusive interviews, artist features, and additional video performances from the historic Massey Hall event.
The 21st Century LAST WALTZ will be released on September 18, 2026, and will be available on all streaming platforms. The release arrives as Chest Fever prepares for their first cross-continental tour of Canada and the United States, celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Last Waltz. For more information, visit chestfeverofficial.com.