Author: Dan DeLuca

Douglas Dulgarian sat in Woodlands Cemetery on a sunny West Philly afternoon, talking about why he loves Philadelphia, and Philadelphia music.

“People move here and slowly their music changes,” he said, wearing a throwback Sixers Allen Iverson jersey. “And I was just drawn to how palpable and powerful that was.”

His band They Are Gutting a Body of Water, known as Tagabow to fans — more on that name in a minute — is the most acclaimed Philly act of 2025.

Both the New York Times and the New Yorker have called the band’s Lotto one of the best albums of the year. Rolling Stone called it “heavier than heaven, hotter than hell, bold as love.”

The Tagabow sound is often categorized as shoegaze, the evolving subgenre invented to describe the ethereal sonic schmear conjured by 1990s bands like My Bloody Valentine and Lush. (Musicians appeared to stare at their own feet on stage, hence the name.)

Dulgarian’s music tends to be more rugged and fast-paced, with roots in punk and the guitarist and bandleader’s affection for 1990s bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth. But more than any genre, Dulgarian says, Tagabow belongs in a geographically specific category.

“Are we shoegaze? Are we a punk band?” he asks. “What we are is Philadelphia music. There is a long lineage of Philly music that is very strictly this place.”

Along with prominent indie acts like Alex G and Spirit of the Beehive, Dulgarian names Blue Smiley, Cooking, Horsecops, and Gunk as bands that inhabit the Philly underground scene of house shows and DIY venues that Tagabow is emerging from.

Dulgarian has put out music by many of those artists — as well as breakout artists MJ Lenderman and Wednesday — on his own label Julia’s War, which releases music digitally and on cassette.

Dulgarian, 35, grew up splitting time with his father, a dirt track race car driver, in New York’s Hudson Valley and his mother, who did secretarial work, in North Jersey, “which has a similar kind of brashness” as Philadelphia, he said.

He first started playing guitar when he was 13or 14; skateboarding led him to start to get serious about music, and develop a fascination with Philadelphia.

“The first time I heard punk rock was in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater I,” he recalls, about the video game which, in its second iteration, featured a re-creation of former Philly street skating mecca LOVE Park.

He got serious about making music at 19 during a 13-month stay in a drug rehab facility in Albany, N.Y. “I always say that I don’t want this stuff to define me,” Dulgarian says, speaking of his struggles with addiction. “But it’s so much a part of my story.”

Lotto begins with “The Chase,” about a harrowing bout of fentanyl withdrawal this past New Year’s Day. (He’s been clean since then and calls himself “an inactive addict.”) It’s also a love letter to Dulgarian’s girlfriend, Emily Lofing, the band’s bassist. (Her name is tattooed on Dulgarian’s right bicep.)

“She gazes at me lovingly,” Dulgarian talk/sings, recounting waking up to 2025 with Lofing by his side in their West Philly apartment. “The me she remembers, the promising mirage of water in this cruel desert.”

In 2016, while still in New York state, Dulgarian put out an album called topiary with the band Jouska. Playing shows at underground venues like Pharmacy in South Philly, he felt the pull of the tight-knit Philly music community.

He moved here and started performing as They Are Gutting a Body of Water with drummer Ben Opatut, who’s still a member of the band, along with guitarist PJ Carroll.

The band name was the result of a misheard song lyric from Grouper, the California ambient musician Elizabeth Harris.

“All these bands were calling themselves Football Dad or Soccer Mommy,” Dulgarian said. “And I was going to name this band the most psychotic thing I possibly could,” because Tagabow’s music on early releases like 2018’s Gestures Been and 2019’s Destiny XL, “felt incendiary.”

Grouper makes “really calming music,” Dulgarian said, but Harris’ lyrics are difficult to hear. “I was singing this song called “Heavy Water / I’d Rather Be Sleeping” incorrectly. I was singing ‘They are gutting a body of water.’”

As a band name, it stuck. “Now it’s my cross to bear,” he said with a laugh.

“Then people started calling us Tagabow, which is an acronym that phonetically makes sense. So we lucked out, I guess.”

Dulgarian loves what he calls the “strangeness” of his adopted city.

“There are places you can go in Philadelphia and you’re like, ‘How can this possibly exist? This can’t be real. It’s like Eraserhead, and how David Lynch was so inspired by Philly.

“It feels so otherworldly in comparison to other places. And the music feels otherworldly sometimes. But it also feels jovial in light of clear anger and dissatisfaction. Every time we go on tour, I come back to this filthy place and I just feel so at home.”

Lotto eschews electronic seasoning, aiming to capture four musicians playing live in the same room. It delivers an emphatic rush from a band poised to find a wider audience that’s now on the same label as Alabama Shakes, My Morning Jacket, and Phish.

Still, he was surprised when the New York Times named Lotto one of the most anticipated albums of the fall, alongside Cardi B and Jeff Tweedy.

“I sent it to my mom. She was like, ‘What?! Oh my God!’ I always joke about this, but I set the bar so low with my parents, because I was a drug addict and I tortured them for a long time.

“So for me to be able to point at something and say: ‘Look, it’s happening!’ is great. And I think that really clicked for my mom. She was like: ‘You’re doing pretty well. You’re good at this thing.’”

The band is set to play three shows at the First Unitarian Church to wrap up a U.S. tour for the album, the fourth by the band Dulgarian formed after moving to Philly from upstate New York in 2016.

The church shows on Dec. 12, 13, and 19 will be performed Tagabow-style, with Dulgarian and bandmates facing each other on a custom-made stage in the middle of the dance floor, with the musicians encircled by the crowd.

Lotto consists of 10 tightly disciplined songs that rage on and resolve themselves in just 27 minutes. It kicks up a righteous racket and conjures moments of real beauty as Dulgarian reaches out for human connections in a relentlessly commodified world.

The album mixes self-reflection while reaching for something pure and true, hoping to find peaceful sanctuary in the eye of a hurricane of noise.

It’s the band’s first album to be released on prominent label ATO Records.

“I was thinking about how I seek out brief, artificial reprieves from existence,” said Dulgarian. “And what I was really trying to get at is the American dream, and how hollow it is. That the thing I will remember is not whatever commercial success my band has, but the guy at the corner store I connect with.

“That’s where the title comes from: this whole idea of the lottery and ‘I can change my life if I buy this ticket.’ That the American Dream of convenience — it’s not real. I think the things in life that are worth it are hard to earn.”

They Are Gutting a Body of Water at First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., at 8 p.m. Dec. 12, 13, and 19. r5productions.com.

Since World Cafe Live founder Hal Real stepped down as CEO in May, drama at the University City music venue has been unending.

Joseph Callahan, who brought the Portal to Philadelphia in 2024, took over from Real and pledged to save the nonprofit venue from financial ruin and $6 million of accumulated debt, in part by turning it into a virtual reality entertainment hub.

But Callahan’s management style conflicted with staffers who, he said, were infected by a “culture of complacency.” Tensions spilled onto the street in June as workers walked out during a Suzanne Vega concert, protesting “unfair treatment” and what they said were light paychecks.

Labor peace seemed to be achieved during a rowdy town hall meeting in July, when then-World Cafe Live president Gar Giles said the company had agreed to collective bargaining with production and front-of-house workers who unionized with IATSE Local 8 and Unite Here Local 274.

But this fall, union organizers say, the venue has reneged on that promise, and on the pledge, made by new CEO J. Sean Diaz in September, to hire back fired employees.

“World Cafe Live has refused to come to the bargaining table,” said Unite Here’s Mat Wranovics. Some workers have been sent letters claiming they owe money back to the company. Others had paychecks deposited into their bank accounts, they say, only to have the money withdrawn without explanation.

And workers are not the only ones expressing frustration with Callahan and his management team — so is the venue’s landlord, the University of Pennsylvania.

The university owns the building at 3025 Walnut St. that houses World Cafe Live’s 650-capacity Music Hall and 220-capacity Lounge. It is also home to the university’s radio station, WXPN-FM (88.5), which is a separate business.

According to public documents obtained by The Inquirer, as early as July, Penn’s real estate office sent Callahan and Giles notice that they had defaulted on their lease and owed the university $1.29 million for rent and utility payments dating back to April 2022. (Callahan has said that in the period before he took over as chairman of the World Cafe Live board, the venue was losing between $45,000 and $70,000 per month.)

Most of that bill had accrued while Real — who converted World Cafe Live into a nonprofit in 2018 — was still CEO. Callahan and Giles were granted 12 days to pay, stressing that the grace period “is being afforded to you only because of Landlord’s relationship with prior management and WXPN, not you.” The last two words were underlined for emphasis.

On July 22, Penn lawyers delivered a notice to vacate, terminating their lease with Real Entertainment LLC. (The venue is still identified by the name Real gave it in 2004.)

World Cafe Live, however, remains in business, with a busy schedule this weekend: Indie band Carbon Leaf is playing the Music Hall on Friday, and country-folk stalwarts Pure Prairie League on Saturday.

That’s because Real Entertainment, with Callahan as its chairman, challenged the eviction notice with a counterclaim in Common Pleas Court.

It states that World Cafe Live has been engaged “in ongoing negotiations regarding lease modifications and denies it is in default,” and adds that “the alleged amount owed is disputed, inaccurate and does not account for significant offsets, concessions and mutual understandings between the parties.”

The case is scheduled for a trial date in January. This week, a spokesperson for Penn’s facilities and real estate services declined to comment.

The new CEO

Diaz was brought in as World Cafe Live’s president and CEO in September by Callahan, who remains chairman of the board. Diaz is a Penn alum, an entertainment lawyer, a former DJ, and a band manager whose clients have included WanMor, the vocal group of Boyz II Men’s Wanya Morris’ four sons, who are also all named Wanya.

His appointment as the new CEO was announced on social media in September. He was also named Giles’ replacement as president.

“I’m not a proxy for Joe,” Diaz said in an interview this week. Callahan, he said, had extracted himself from day-to-day operations to focus on technology concerns.

In that same announcement, Diaz said that all terminated employees would be hired back. Former employees said they did receive emails urging them to request an interview, but none had been rehired.

“I should have chosen my words more carefully,” he admitted.

He also expressed optimism that the conflict over the lease could be resolved and that World Cafe Live and Penn could come to terms to keep the venue open.

“There needs to be a meeting of the minds,” said Diaz, who lives in Voorhees, in South Jersey. “Penn’s main concern, obviously, is getting paid as a landlord and making sure that XPN has the continuity they’re built up in that building. That’s an important partnership.”

That partnership is not currently on the best of terms. Since word got out that World Cafe Live’s liquor license lapsed on Oct. 31, XPN has moved its beloved “Free at Noon” concert series to Ardmore Music Hall, where the Budos Band will play Friday. The series will stay there at least until Jan. 2.

Diaz acknowledged alcohol had been served at some World Cafe Live shows after the license had expired, saying he anticipated the venue would have to pay a penalty for the infraction. “But what does everybody want? The city and the state want their tax revenue. Penn wants XPN back in the building. So we are working to resolve this as fast as possible.”

In the meantime, World Cafe Live is a BYOB venue. On Thursday, a sign on the window said ticket holders would be charged $20 per person for bringing their own drinks, and $10 if they ordered food.

Continuing labor unrest

Employees like Emilia Reynolds, who is one of two former World Cafe Live bartenders who spoke to The Inquirer, do not believe Diaz’s claim that he is not Callahan’s proxy.

“Joe does all the work behind the scenes,” Reynolds said of Callahan, who is also CEO of California-based Sansar, a virtual reality company. “He tells everyone what to do.”

Reynolds, who started tending bar at World Cafe Live in 2023, said they were optimistic about this summer after “me and all my coworkers all got together and unionized the building and got our recognition.”

But that optimism waned in the fall, Reynolds said, after the company did not come to the bargaining table.

“Then fast-forward to Oct. 1, when I woke up without a paycheck. Or, to be more specific, I woke up with a paycheck and then a few hours later had the exact same amount taken right back out.”

Reynolds confronted Callahan after a show later that month about the missing money and was told “that I was one of 16 people who maliciously stole from the company and manipulated payroll.”

Two days later, they were fired via email.

Reynolds, Wranovics said, is among the employees who “were fired for a totally outrageous situation relating to the fact that they had not received pay.”

Diaz did not address Reynolds’ case but claimed that “there was some manipulation of the payroll, with employees logging in for rates or hours they weren’t authorized at.”

Allison Eskridge, also a bartender, first worked at World Cafe Live in 2005 for a two-year stint, then returned in 2015.

Like Reynolds, Eskridge talks fondly about the community of coworkers during the Real years. “Hal was always hands on. He was always going to the shows and passionate about the music. It felt like there really wasn’t another place like it. It was really, really special,” she said.

Eskridge said she was not paid for two pay periods in October and is owed between $1,000 and $2,000. After sending multiple emails to managers about her missing money that were not responded to, she, too, received a termination notice via email, she said.

“It just said: ‘Your services are no longer required.’”

Growing solidarity

On Oct. 12, State Rep. Rich Krajewski and City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who both represent the University City area, posted a joint social media video after visiting World Cafe Live.

“We are here to show solidarity with the workers,” Krajewski (D., Phila.) said in the video, adding that he was “extremely disappointed and ashamed that the workers have been mistreated, they have had wages taken away from them.”

He went on to call on management “to do better and come to the table and negotiate in good faith.”

“We came here today to meet with management,” Gauthier said, only to find no managers at the venue. “We are here to say: Pay your workers.”

Current and former workers have an online presence on Instagram under the handle Save World Cafe Live. On Jan. 11, Unite Here and the United Musicians and Allied Workers union will present a “World Cafe Live Workers Benefit” show at Johnny Brenda’s featuring Philly acts Carsie Blanton, Ray Drezner, Izzy True, and Sad13.

Question of the future

With the chaos and accusations of mismanagement, can World Cafe Live survive?

Diaz believes it’s too important not to.

“There’s a real cost” if the venue were to close, he said. “Not just to World Cafe Live as a brand, but to XPN, to Penn, to West Philadelphia, to the city, to this community.”

Though the World Cafe Live calendar has been thin and uninspired in recent weeks, Diaz said that by cutting costs, “we have got the operation to the point where it’s financially stable.”

He welcomes Callahan’s metaverse ideas if they can bring in new revenue streams, but said he imagines a venue that can sustain itself by being “more accessible and inclusive.”

“And when I say that, everybody thinks I just mean race, but I don’t. It means to be more accessible to the arts in a broader way. More kinds of music, but also dance, theater, and food events. You have to make this a place that more people have access to.

“It’s going to take the right resources, the right timing, the right relationship with Penn, and some resetting to bring it back,” Diaz said. “But what I do believe is that people are forgiving. And if you do the right thing, people will come back and support.”

This article has been updated with the correct pronouns for Emilia Reynolds and the correct price for BYOB tickets at WCL. Reynolds uses they/ them pronouns and the tickets cost $20.

Sixty-two years ago, Allan Sherman was all the rage.

Sherman, the singer and comedian who specialized in wry song parodies rife with references to Jewish culture, released three albums that all topped the Billboard charts in 1963.

The popularity of “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp),” a song about a spoiled child writing home from summer camp, set to music from Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda, made his My Son, the Nut the fastest-selling album ever up to that point in time.

And judging from the lineup that will perform at “Glory, Glory Allan Sherman: A Celebrity Music and Comedy Salute,” the tribute concert being staged at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History on Thursday, affection for Sherman, who died in 1973 at age 48, remains strong with musicians across a wide range of genres.

The A-list lineup includes performance artist Laurie Anderson, centenarian Sun Ra Arkestra leader and free jazz sax player Marshall Allen, NRBQ pianist Terry Adams, English songwriter and novelist (and Philly resident) Wesley Stace, Dead Milkmen vocalist Rodney Anonymous, Hooters singer-guitarist Eric Bazilian, and Low Cut Connie bandleader Adam Weiner.

Bringing these eclectic talents together in tribute to the musical humorist who’s been called “Weird Al Yankovic’s Founding ‘Faddah’” is Bucks County native Jonathan Stein, who coproduced the show with his partner Jess Gonchor.

(In 2014, Yankovic’s Mandatory Fun became the first comedy album to top the Billboard pop chart since My Son, the Nut in 1963.)

A handful of VIP-level tickets remain for the otherwise sold-out 8 p.m. “Glory, Glory.” By popular demand, a 3 p.m. dress rehearsal show has been added, for which tickets are available.

Stein says Philadelphia is “a weird hotbed” of Sherman popularity, partly because Kathy O’Connell, host of Kids Corner on WXPN-FM (88.5), has been playing his music since the show’s inception in 1988.

For over a decade, Stein has been working on an in-and-out-of-development project aiming to bringing a biopic of the pudgy, unlikely pop star who chronicled Jewish life in songs like “Sarah Jackman“ (set to the tune of “Frere Jacques”) and “Harvey and Sheila” (based on “Hava Nagila”).

Stein is also a fan of Hal Willner, the Philadelphia-born producer who specialized in bringing musicians of diverse backgrounds together to sing sea chanteys, or honor William S. Burroughs, or recast music from Walt Disney films.

The poster for “Glory, Glory” announces the concert is presented “in conjunction with the spirit of Hal Willner,” who died in the spring of 2020 in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The eight-piece house band at the show will be led by pianist and bandleader Steve Weisberg, a longtime Willner associate.

Willner, the longtime Saturday Night Live sketch music coordinator, was the son of a Polish Holocaust survivor who co-owned Hymie’s Deli in Merion Station. In 2014, Willner put on a Sherman tribute in New York that featured many “Glory, Glory” guests, plus luminaries like the composer Philip Glass.

The diversity of the “Glory, Glory” bill reflects Willner’s try-anything aesthetic. It includes Robert Smigel, the comic behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog; actress Chloe Webb, who played Sid Vicious’ Philadelphia-born girlfriend Nancy Spungen in Sid & Nancy; and “banshee mandolin” player John Kruth.

“Hal had this Rolodex, and people just wanted to do his shows,” says Stein. “When we started talking about doing this, and Hal’s name was invoked, people started coming on board left and right, because they know what kind of show it’s going to be, and they want to be a part of it.”

When Dan Samuels, the Weitzman’s director of public programs, first got Stein’s pitch to bring the Sherman show to the museum he thought, “This is crazy!” but in the best possible way, he says, while on a Zoom call with Stein this week.

Generations of fans “came up on Allan Sherman, or their parents had the records in the house, or their grandparents had the records in the house, or maybe because they just know [”Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”],” says Samuels, who also grew up in Bucks County. “They’re going to be surprised when they realize the version of the songs are not going to sound like they did on the records. They might be really surprised when they hear Marshall Allen.”

Stein built the lineup for the Sherman show with the help of Stace, the songwriter who has also been known as John Wesley Harding who brings disparate musicians and other creative types together in his own “Cabinet of Wonders” performance series.

Stace counted himself in, and connected Stein with the Hooters’ Bazilian and Low Cut Connie’s Weiner. “They both e-mailed me back and said: ‘I’m in,’” Stein says. “And those three right there are the beginnings of a great hometown show.”

Almost all of the artists on Stein’s wish list came back with a yes, including pianist Adams, who worked with Willner on many projects, and Anderson, who also teamed with Willner and is the widow of Willner’s close friend Lou Reed.

Just this week, however, he did get “a very kind rejection letter from the Phillie Phanatic. He expressed his regrets and “apologized that he’s already booked,” Stein says.

Another Philly icon that Stein did get is the Dead Milkmen’s Anonymous. He’ll sing a song called “I’m a Punk.”

Sherman didn’t write it. Dr. Seuss did.

“Allan voiced The Cat in the Hat for CBS in 1971,” Stein says. “It’s just a really clever, pre-punk punk song, with the guy declaring that he’s just a punk,” which rhymes with “a crutunkulous shnunk!”

“When I asked him,” Stein says, “he said ‘Oh my God, I’m so honored to do it. My Mom and I would sing Allan Sherman songs together all the time.”

Stace’s history with Sherman goes back to his mid-‘70s schoolboy days in England. At a friend’s house, a pile of Velvet Underground, David Bowie, T-Rex and Roxy Music records gave him “my first proper education in music,” he says. And there was also one Allan Sherman album, My Son, the Celebrity, the second hit LP from 1963.

“That’s the one with the liner notes that says ‘the family are croquet players, with mallets toward none,’” says Stace, with a laugh. “I know that album inside out.”

At the Sherman tribute, Stace will perform “Won’t You Please Come Home, Disraeli” sung in the character of Queen Victoria to the tune of “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey,” and “Me,” in which Sherman described his physique as “a carcass” dressed in “the best from Neiman Marcus.”

“They’re both very funny songs,” Stace says. “I hope to do them justice.”

“Glory, Glory Allan Sherman: A Celebrity Music and Comedy Salute,” Dec. 4, 8 p.m., Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, 101 South Independence Mall East. There is also a 3 p.m. dress rehearsal. theweitzman.org