Lollapalooza 1994 was the last time FDR Park hosted a major concert. Connor Barwin is changing that with Make the World Better weekend
The music will headlined by Lucy Dacus and Remi Wolf. Diplo’s 5K run is also in the mix, along with a bunch of restaurants and small businesses.
The last time a major concert event was staged at FDR Park, Toni Bourgeois was in middle school in Chester County, saving up money in a tin can to pay for her ticket for Lollapalooza 1994.
That touring festival featured Beastie Boys, Green Day, George Clinton, Nick Cave, L7, the Flaming Lips, and Smashing Pumpkins with surprise guest Courtney Love, on an eye-popping bill that lured Bourgeois and her parents from Oxford to South Philly.
Thirty-one years later, music is set to come back to FDR Park with Connor Barwin’s inaugural Make the World Better Concert Weekend.
It’s an expansion of the MTWB fundraising shows the former Philadelphia Eagle defensive end and current director of player development (and recent recipient of his first Super Bowl ring) has been putting on for a decade.
That tradition started with Kurt Vile headlining Union Transfer in 2014, and moved to the Dell Music Center with the War on Drugs in 2017. Subsequent benefits included Japanese Breakfast in 2022, and Alex G and Alvvays in 2023.
As ever, these shows will benefit the MTWB foundation, which Barwin founded with his mother, Margaret Bailey, in 2013. The foundation rebuilds parks and rec centers throughout the city. MTWB’S most ambitious project is the recently completed $21 million Vare Recreation Center in South Philly and work is underway at Hart Park in Old Kensington.
MTWB Concert Weekend is a two-years-in-the-planning project that’s the brainchild of Barwin and Bourgeois, the general manager of Franklin Music Hall and an MTWB board member.
The weekend “is really an extension of what we do, as we grew from UT to the Dell, and now from the Dell to FDR Park,” said Barwin, a skilled multitasker who is executive producer of the Philly Specials charity albums and part-owner of the Italian basketball team Pallacanestro Trieste.
Making it happen took “teamwork between us, Parks and Rec, Friends of FDR Park, the Fairmount Park Conservancy, and the neighborhood,” plus businesses such as the Phillies, Comcast, the Eagles, and music promoters Bowery Presents.
“That’s a lot of stakeholders, but it takes everybody coming together to do it,” Barwin said. “I love the shows at the Dell, but I’m always thinking: How can we bring more people together?”
Visiting other cities, Barwin found that music series in parks “can be pretty incredible. For a long time I thought there’s got to be a way to do this in Philadelphia, and I knew FDR was the spot to do it.”
Bourgeois ran Union Transfer with R5 Productions founder Sean Agnew when Barwin put on his first benefit in 2014. She is a South Philly resident and FDR Park superuser, along with her husband, Randy Huth, who plays bass in the heavy-rock band Pissed Jeans.
Friday and Sunday’s MTWB shows — music starts at 5:30 p.m. and ends at 10 — are each impressive indie-rock triple bills.
The day one headliner is former Philadelphian songwriter Lucy Dacus, back behind her new album, Forever is a Feeling, after playing the Met Philly in April.
» READ MORE: Former Philadelphian Lucy Dacus plays a very Philly show to kick off her ‘Forever Is a Feeling’ tour
She’ll be supported by Frances Quinlan-led Philly foursome Hop Along, who played for MTWB at UT in 2016, as well as Jay Som, Los Angeles songwriter Melissa Duterte, whose Belong is due in October.
Sunday is topped by California indie-pop star Remi Wolf and includes Magdalena Bay, the electronic duo of University of Pennsylvania grad Mica Tenenbaum and musical partner Matthew Lewin, whose Imaginal Disk was a 2024 standout.
They’ll be joined by Nashville songwriter Annie DiRusso, whose breakout album Super Pedestrian contains a title apropos of a steamy weekend: “It’s Good to Be Hot in the Summer.” Single-day tickets are $79 and two-day passes go for $172.
All this, and Diplo too.
MTWB takes Saturday off, but that morning — at 9 a.m. — Diplo’s Run Club will step in the void, with the DJ-producer born Thomas Wesley Pentz, who launched his career in Philadelphia in the 2000s, leading a 5K that begins and ends in the park. Midmorning DJ sets by A-Trak and Diplo himself follow.
The Run Club is not an official MTWB event, but is coordinated with the indie-rock weekend, with $4 of each ticket — which start at $75 for runners and $52 for watchers — going to Barwin’s foundation.
Bourgeois’ memories of muddy, starry Lolla ’94 are vivid, “and I just really remember loving the park.”
She came to Philly for punk shows, and hung out at FDR’s skate park as a teenager. After moving to South Philly in the 1990s, Bourgeois — who owns the Hive Cafe at Broad and Dickinson — said the 348 acres of the park became “part of the fabric of my life.”
“I have my son’s birthday at the park every June, and during the pandemic, we were always here. It saved our lives, being able to get out of the house.”
“I was always like ‘God, it would be so cool to do something here,’ ” she said, talking while overseeing the building of the site in a field in FDR’s northeast corner, a short walk through the spiffy new Gateway Plaza entrance by SEPTA’s NRG Station at Broad and Pattison.
Lolla ’94 drew 45,000 people. Barwin expects around 3,000, on a site configured to comfortably hold twice as many as that.
“We’re not doing anything that big, especially the first year, because I just want to show the city that we can have cool stuff in the park,” Bourgeois said, “and it won’t be a big burden on anyone, and we can come in and do something positive.”
Barwin says the weekend should bring in $100,000 for MTWB, which will soon be announcing a soccer field-focused project in the city, timed to the World Cup’s arrival in 2026.
MTWB concertgoers will be fed by local food vendors.
The music site is in a different section of the park than the renowned Southeast Asian Market, which is closed this weekend.
But two of the vendors — Cambodian stalls Bee-Z Kitchen and Shabyy Food, the latter known for a lemongrass cheesesteak — will be at MTWB. Other options will include Filipino eatery Tabachoy and Mexican Cantina La Martina.
Pat’s King of Steaks will also be serving grub, along with Frio’s Gourmet Pops and Reanimator Coffee, selling cold brew cans with custom MTWB artwork. Philly small businesses Room Shop, Yay Diff Charm Bar, and You Deserve a Little Treat will also have pop-ups.
“As somebody who just loves my city so much, it was important to me that we honored the Southeast Asian Market and how important it is to the park,” said Bourgeois, whose uncle is Cajun musician Jivin’ Gene Bourgeois. “I didn’t want to overdo it with too many vendors, because I want everybody to make money.”
Barwin and Bourgeois think this weekend could lead to more FDR Park shows, though not this year.
“I’m not sure,” said Bourgeois. “Everyone’s cool with just seeing how this goes. But this is a really great space for events and a good area for it. I would hope that we would do something, and this isn’t just a one-time only.”
And will MTWB weekend in FDR Park actually make the world better?
“I think it adds something to the city,” said Barwin. “It’s a great lineup of music all weekend long at one of the coolest parks in the city. That experience is additive to living in Philadelphia.”
More info on MTWB Concert Weekend at mtwbconcert.com.