Connor Barwin’s Make The World Better Concert Weekend is on the move.
Last year, the former Eagle All-Pro defensive end’s benefit concert series expanded to two days and debuted at FDR Park in South Philly.
This year, MTWB weekend will again be a two-day event, but it’s headed back to the Dell Music Center in Fairmount Park, in the Strawberry Mansion section of the city.
The 2026 weekend — a benefit for Barwin’s MTWB Foundation, which partners with the city of Philadelphia to build and revitalize playgrounds and rec centers — will take place at the Dell on July 24 and 25.
The weekend opens on a Friday night with Pavement, the Stephen Malkmus-fronted acclaimed alt-rock band that rose to prominence in the 1990s. The lineup will also include rising Chicago quintet Ratboys, whose new Singin’ to an Empty Chair is one of the standout album of 2026.
Saturday night’s bill will be topped by Kurt Vile & the Violators, the Philadelphia rock heroes who have a long history with Barwin, having played the first ever MTWB benefit at Union Transfer in 2014.
Vile — whose most recent album is 2022’s Watch My Moves but is expected to release new music this year — will be joined by They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, the West Philly band fronted by Doug Dulgarian. The band, also known as TAGABOW, made a splash with its 2025 album Lotto. Also on the bill is New Orleans garage-punk duo Twisted Teens, whose winning Blame the Clown came out in February.
MTWB concerts have been previously staged at the Dell, a city owned venue whose annual concert series focuses on old school R&B and hip-hop acts. Most recently, Philly songwriter Alex G and Canadian indie pop band Alvvays played a MTWB show at the Dell in 2023. Japanese Breakfast, The War on Drugs, and Future Islands have also headlined one-night benefit shows there.
Last year, Barwin’s benefit series traveled south to FDR Park for weekend concerts headlined Lucy Dacus and Remi Wolf, highlighted by a Dacus show in which the formerly Philadelphian singer and member of Boygenius married several couples on stage.
The Park sparkled as a venue but the shows failed to sell out and didn’t raise as much money as MTWB is able to at the Dell, Barwin said.
“We are so excited to be back at the Dell,” Barwin said in an interview with the Inquirer.
“We’re always trying to experiment and try new venues. Last year, it as awesome to be in the Park, where a lot of our work is focused. But we’re excited to be at the Dell where we don’t have to build the stage, we don’t have to to build the infrastructure, and we can raise more money.”
“There’s nothing like a summer night in Philly with great music and a great purpose behind it,” said Philadelphia Parks and Recreation commissioner Susan Slawson said in a statement. “The Make The World Better Concert Weekend at the Dell brings people together, and we’re proud our parks help bring it to life.”
Last year’s two MTWB concerts, which were produced in partnership with concert promoters Bowery Presents, which puts on shows at Franklin Music Hall, Union Transfer, and other venues in the region, raised approximately $50,000, Barwin said.
But the ex-Eagle, who now serves as the team’s head of player development and is executive producer of the Philly Specials charity Christmas albums, said that one sold-out night at the Dell, which has a capacity of 6000, would bring in $100,000. Multiply that by 2 and this year’s weekend has the potential to be the biggest MTWB benefit weekend ever.
Scoring Pavement as a headliner qualifies as a significant get for R5 Productions, the Philly indie promoters who have partnered with Barwin since 2014, a year after the music-loving athlete (who went to the University of Cincinnati with his friend and former teammate Jason Kelce) founded MTWB with his mother Margaret.
The five-piece ironic and yet not ironic band known for albums like 1992’s Slanted and Enchanted and 1994’s Crooked Rain, have not toured since 2022, when they played the Met Philly. Since then, the band was the subject of Bryn Mawr native filmmaker Alex Ross Perry’s super-meta film Pavements, which mixed footage of the actual band members and actors portraying them. The band has 10 other tour dates announced for this summer, but the Dell show is the only one in the northeast U.S.
Barwin stresses that though MTWB weekend is moving from FDR Park back to the Dell, his goal of partnering with Philly concert promoters to bringing more music events to parks and other public spaces is ongoing.
“Our vision at MTWB,” he said, “is eventually to build a stage in some public place, and then have music for a month long, where you’re having four or five paid shows, and then in-between there’s 10 to 15 public, free shows. That’s the vision, but that’s really hard to do, with the music industry what it is now, and the cost of everything. But in the future, that’s maybe what it looks like.”
And where would those concerts be? The Dell? FDR Park?
“I don’t think we know,” Barwin said. “Maybe at FDR. Maybe it could be at City Hall. Maybe Belmont Plateau. We’ll see how the Roots picnic goes, right? Or maybe at the Dell and then at that little park up above the Dell, that strawberry Mansion Square there.
“So we don’t know where it would be. But for a two day show, with these bands, the Dell is the best venue to do it in, where we can raise the most money. And I love being at a public venue, and a venue that a lot of people still don’t know about.”
» READ MORE: What is They Are Gutting a Body of Water? A West Philly band that’s all the rage.
Starting with the very first benefit show at Union Transfer in 2014, with Vile, the Districts and the Ton Ton Band, most of the MTWB shows have been advertised with posters made by Stephen “ESPO” Powers, the Philly artist known for his West Philly A Love Letter To You mural and the Kurt Vile mural in Nothern Liberties, among many other works.
For this year’s Pavement-headlined shows, Powers’ poster is a visual pun. On Friday afternoon, he marked the poster design directly into wet concrete in a piece of South Philly pavement provided by Philadelphia concrete contractor company Mark Cement.
With the aid of photos taken by a drone flying overhead, the image Powers created has been turned into this year’s show poster.
“I’ve marked a lot of surfaces before, but this is the first time I was able to scribe on concrete,” Powers said after he finished the one-hour job on Friday. “Once I heard the band is Pavement, I wanted to do it this way. It was a simple pun, but it deserved to be done. So it was cool we were able to do it here. So thanks for the love of Philadelphia and Philadelphians. Go Eagles. Go Birds.”
Tickets for the MTWB shows are now available through a presale at DellMusicCenter.com and R5Productions.com. The passcode is PHILLY. General on sale date is Friday April 3 at 10 a.m.