at the time was such that Young's co-producer Niko Bolas stated, "You can't do a Neil Young album without Poncho...there's no one thing he does, but if he wasn't there it'd come apart." As a member of The Bluenotes (a horn-driven blues rock ensemble later rechristened Ten Men Workin'), Sampedro played on Young's This Note's for You (1987) and contributed keyboards and guitar to the band's ensuing support tour; a selection of live recordings from the Bluenotes era were finally released as Bluenote Café in 2015. Although he was not included in The Restless (a short-lived hard rock power trio that evolved from Ten Men Workin'), Sampedro contributed heavily to Young's 1989 album, Freedom. Sampedro also received a belated co-writing credit on the Young anthem "Rockin' in the Free World." He explained in a 2013 Rolling Stone interview that in 1989 Young and Crazy Horse were scheduled to perform in Russia but the performances were canceled. Sampedro told Young, "I guess we’ll have to keep on rockin’ in the free world," to which Young replied, "Wow, that’s a cool line. That’s a really good phrase. I wanna use it." On the September 30, 1989 broadcast of Saturday Night Live, Sampedro led an ad hoc ensemble (including drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Charley Drayton) that backed Young for "No More" and "Rockin' in the Free World", regarded by critics as one of the greatest live rock television performances of all time. (The band, said one writer, looked like "a bunch of car thieves.") Sampedro also accompanied Young on mandolin and piano on the subsequent solo tour. In 1990, Crazy Horse (once again including Sampedro) returned for Young's 1990 album Ragged Glory and two live albums recorded on the following tour, Weld and Arc. Young then used Crazy Horse for Sleeps with Angels (1994) and Broken Arrow (1996). Sampedro's proficiency in emergent computer technology (honed during Young's experiments with the medium in the early 1980s) allowed him to cultivate another career. He worked as an engineer on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 to 2010 under bandleader Kevin Eubanks, running the ensemble's MIDI board as well as serving as an assistant/project manager to Eubanks. In 1997, Crazy Horse was featured on Young's live Year of the Horse album. Sampedro's appearance in Jim Jarmusch's accompanying documentary led San Francisco Examiner critic Craig Marine to state "the funniest parts of the movie