Song Review: Widespread Panic feat. Steve Winwood - “Dear Mr. Fantasy” (Live, Sept. 6, 2014)
Widespread Panic was content to remain in the background, playing in Traffic as it were, as Steve Winwood led the band through “Dear Mr. Fantasy.”
It was Sept. 6, 2014, at Virginia’s LOCKN’ festival and, with Mr. and Mrs. Sound Bites up close, Winwood Panic played a collaborative set from which this gem was recently extracted.
In a voice virtually untainted by time, Winwood sings it without harmony and plays the guitar solos with ferocity from the past. But at the five-minute mark, Panic’s sound emerges as the band picks up the tempo, JoJo Hermann tosses in piano and Jimmy Herring and Winwood play twin guitar in harmonic and alternating measures.
This “Fantasy” was staggering in real time, a pristine splitting and stitching of the temporary partners to create something both new and unchanged. Eleven years later on professional video, its impact remains and carries the extra poignancy of this festival run marking some of Todd Nance’s final appearances with the band he co-founded in 1986.
Grade card: Widespread Panic feat. Steve Winwood - “Dear Mr. Fantasy” (Live - 9/6/14) - A
3/3/25
