For Philly’s DIY music scene, the spirit is ‘do it together’

At Philly Style Pizza & Grill, near Temple University, customers can order a slice by day or catch a punk show by night.

“The first time I heard there was a show here, I asked why,” says Dylan Michael of the Philly-based punk band Attack Dog. “Why would you do that? And now, it’s like the most popping spot in North Philly. So I guess that’s a point in and of itself — it really can happen anywhere.”

The pizza shop is part of a long tradition in Philadelphia, where musicians have turned basements, row homes and even a batting cage facility into makeshift concert venues.

As part of our Sense of Place: Philadelphia series, World Cafe sat down with some of the city’s DIY musicians, both current players and veterans.

Ian Farmer, who has played in bands including Modern Baseball and Slaughter Beach, Dog, moved to Philadelphia in 2011. He and his Modern Baseball bandmates later ran their own venue out of a West Philadelphia row home they called “Michael Jordan,” charging fans whatever they could pay — or a photo of the basketball legend.

“The DIY culture and community really taught me and pushed me to have the values of be good to everybody and help everybody out,” he says.

Missy Dabice, frontwoman of the punk band Mannequin Pussy, moved to Philadelphia from Colorado and says she found the community she had been searching for in Philly. She later became a regular at Everybody Hits, a batting cage business that transformed into a DIY venue at night.

Though Mannequin Pussy has since achieved critical and commercial success, Dabice said the band’s early ethos has stayed with her.

“I definitely feel like the ethos of this band is DIT — we do it together,” she says. “I think what makes bands so special is that they’re basically socialist experiments. We live in a world of hyper-individualistic capitalism, and what that wants to do — especially in the arts — is to make people feel like they do have to do it all themselves.”

Jayce Williams, founder of the 4333 Collective and guitarist for the Philly emo band Sweet Pill, grew up in North Jersey, where he says there wasn’t much of a music scene. He built one himself, eventually booking shows on his college campus at Rowan University.

Williams said balancing the demands of touring and the music industry with personal well-being remains an ongoing challenge.

“It’s really hard to find stability,” Williams says. “It’s really hard to be grounded through those peaks and valleys, and so the same way I had to create my own scene in my hometown when I started, I had to create my own grounding. It took me years to figure that out. I was the type of person to pour my all into my work and not really take care of myself, and I’m finding a better balance of that.”

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Will Loftus and Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson.