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What to do in Philly, Sept. 20-26: Free pizza, Dr. Dog, John Coltrane’s birthday, and a weird new festival in Kensington

Plus: Oktoberfest, historic houses, and Philly Fashion Week in a newly reopened Gallery (a.k.a., the Fashion District).

Road-tested Philly band Dr. Dog plays the Met Philadelphia Saturday, Sept. 21.
Road-tested Philly band Dr. Dog plays the Met Philadelphia Saturday, Sept. 21.Read moreFILE PHOTO

Pack away the air conditioners and break out the sweaters: Next Monday marks the official first day of fall. You can toast to that in so many ways.

You could go to an area Oktoberfest. We rounded up around 40 over the next month. Some are as close as South Street’s Brauhaus Schmitz bash, where folks throw back steins and dance on benches in lederhosen. Others are as far as Reading, where a longtime German singing club hosts a highly traditional Oktoberfest based on the Munich original. Wherever you live, there’s a fest for you.

Not feeling beer? How about historic house museums? Fairmount Park has six gems they’re opening up this weekend during CiderFest. The gorgeous 18th-century mansions all have interesting stories to tell, and you can hear them on Saturday, bubbly Pennsylvania-made beverage in hand.

Finally, if shopping is more your speed, Monday is the start of Philly Fashion Week, held in the just-opened Fashion District on Market Street. Columnist Elizabeth Wellington talked to its founders about this year’s highlights.

— Jenn Ladd (@jrladd, jladd@inquirer.com)

FOOD

Pierogi Fest

Feast on pierogies at this annual Holy Ghost Social Center festival, featuring food, craft beer, music, and games for all ages. Pierogi fillings include classics like potato and cheese, and sausage and peppers, alongside more innovative options, like buffalo chicken and pumpkin pie. — G.D.

3 to 8 p.m., Saturday, the Holy Ghost Social Center and Church, 55 Starr St., Phoenixville, pay as you go, holyghostphoenixville.org/pierogifest

Free Pizza Concert to Save Fishtown

Musical comedy troupe the Pizza Collection and Fishtown pie shop Pizza Brain team up for a saucy dance party intended to save Fishtown “from pizza obscurity.” The Pizza Collection will draw from its collection of 200 pizza-dedicated songs for an outdoor concert, where fresh slices will be handed out to all. — Grace Dickinson

6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Saturday, 1200 Crease St., free, facebook.com/pizzabrainphilly

FESTIVAL

Weirdo: The East Kensington Arts and Oddities Festival

Get weird at this neighborhood festival, where you can compete in a trash scarecrow-building contest, check out roaming art, and enjoy Martha hoagies and Over Easy Breakfast Club BBQ. Furry friends welcome. — Bethany Ao

2 to 8 p.m., Saturday, Kensington Community Food Co-op, 2670 Coral St., free, 215-515-7887, weirdo.pizza

FAMILY

Bubblepop

Floating globes make a Saturday-long appearance — for science’s sake. Museum guests get to experiment with tools and materials, witness the soap-bubble monster, and inhabit their very own bubble. — Lauren McCutcheon

10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, the Franklin Institute, 222 N. 20th St., free with admission, 215-448-1200, fi.edu

DANCE

Trisha Brown Dance Company

The company will perform In Motion, In Place, a trio of Brown works meant to give new perspective to your environment. The works are “Roof Piece,” Sept. 24-25 at Logan Circle; “Foray Forêt,” Sept. 28-29 at Mount Pleasant Mansion; and “Raft Piece,” Sept. 28-29, at the Discovery Center. Tickets are free but must be reserved. — Ellen Dunkel

Tuesday through Sunday, Sept. 29, various locations, free, 215-988-9334, myphillypark.org/trisha-brown

COMEDY

Dan Soder

Dan Soder may be a New York-based comedian, but he has a strong Philly pedigree — he cohosts the Bonfire, a weekday SiriusXM radio show on Comedy Central Radio, with area native Big Jay Oakerson, and has a noted affinity for Wawa. Soder even made Wawa-inspired apple fritters on Bert Kreischer’s YouTube cooking show, “Something’s Burning,” over the summer, so while he may not be one of us, we accept him as our own. — Nick Vadala

7:30 and 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday, Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., $18-$34, 215-496-9001, philadelphia.heliumcomedy.com

ENVIRONMENT

‘Anthropocene: The Human Epoch’

Institutions around the United States are joining to screen this new environmental documentary, a cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet. Panel discussion with academy scientists to follow the screening. — Stephan Salisbury

7 p.m., Wednesday, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy., $15 ($12 for Academy members), 215-299-1000, ansp.org

MUSIC

Iron & Wine and Calexico

Fourteen years ago, Iron & Wine and Calexico collaborated on an EP, In the Reins. They found common ground between the hushed folk of Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine and the sweeping Southwestern rock and Mexican mariachi of Joey Burns and John Convertino’s Calexico. The tour that followed saw the two bands playing separate sets, then joining at the end. This year’s full-length Years to Burn is a much more collaborative affair: rather than a meeting, it’s a lovely merger. Friday’s Union Transfer show will feature one band comprised of key touring members of both projects (including Calexico trumpeter Jacob Valenzuela and I&W keyboardist Rob Burger), with Beam and Burns sharing lead vocals. Natalie Prass opens. — Steve Klinge

8 p.m., Friday, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., $40, 215-232-2100, utphilly.com

Adam Ant

Adam and the Ants’ post-punk tribal sounds on Kings of the Wild Frontier might have put the British ensemble on the Top of the Pops in the U.K. But, in the U.S., it was Ant’s swinging 1982 solo debut, Friend or Foe, that made him a viable commodity. Like a swarthier David Bowie, Ant cackled and crooned through Foe’s swaggering hit singles “Goody Two Shoes” and “Desperate but not Serious,” with more pop and less Burundi percussion behind him, to say nothing of a distinct lack of pirate gear. Now, Adam and Co. will bring back the “Antmusic” of his start as a solo act to the Merriam Theater stage, playing Friend or Foe, front to back. — A.D. Amorosi

8 p.m., Friday, the Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., $39.50-$59.50, 215-893-1999, kimmelcenter.org

Massive Attack

Rather than simply celebrate the 21st anniversary of their trip-hop classic Mezzanine, Massive Attack have chosen to deconstruct it. With the help of filmmaker Adam Curtis, they are using their old foreboding songs such as “Inertia Creeps” to comment on our present data-driven, privacy-compromised culture. They have extracted songs that were sampled from or alluded to on the album (by the Cure, the Velvet Underground, and Pete Seeger) and added them as full cover versions in the set list. Best of all, longtime leaders Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshall have brought along two of the album’s guest vocalists, reggae great Horace Andy and the Cocteau Twins’ transcendent and elusive Elizabeth Fraser. The sold-out show, rescheduled from the spring, would be notable just for the opportunity to hear Fraser sing “Teardrops.” — S.K.

9 p.m., Friday, the Met Philadelphia, 858 N. Broad St., sold out, 800-653-8000, themetphilly.com

Dr. Dog / Shakey Graves / Liz Cooper

Road-tested Philly band Dr. Dog played their biggest local show to date with a Festival Pier gig in June of last year, behind their 10th solo album, Critical Equation. Now, the Toby Leaman- and Scott McMicken-fronted band is swinging back through for a classy return show at the Met Philadelphia. It’s a coheadlined bill with Shakey Graves, the Austin folk-and-roll singer born Alejandro Rose-Garcia, who’s also had acting roles in Friday Night Lights and the Spy Kids franchise. Nashville trio Liz Cooper & the Stampede opens. — Dan DeLuca

7 p.m., Saturday, the Met Philadelphia, 858 N. Broad St., $29.50-$65, 800-653-8000, metphilly.com

Lucinda Williams

The Car Wheels on a Gravel Road tour keeps rolling along. Lucinda Williams had a late-career resurgence with her to mid-decade double albums, 2014’s Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone and 2016’s The Ghosts of Highway 20. But lately the Southern songwriter is into giving the past its due with an ongoing celebration of the 1998 album that is widely considered to be her best. She first brought the tour to Collingswood last November. Now, she’s circling the area, with a Saturday show in Princeton, Sunday in Wilmington, and another on Oct. 2 at World Cafe Live. — D.D.

8 p.m., Saturday, the McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, sold out, 609-358-2787, mccarter.org; also 7 p.m., Sunday, Copeland Hall at the Wilmington Grand Opera House, 818 N. Market St., Wilmington, Del., $43-$49, 302-652-5577, thgrandwilmington.org; 8 p.m., Oct. 2, World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St., sold out, 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com

John Coltrane’s Birthday Celebration

The impact that iconic saxophonist John Coltrane was able to make in his short life will be evident this weekend in his one-time hometown, on the eve of what would have been his 93rd birthday. On Saturday, Philadelphia Jazz Project will present “Celebrate Coltrane 2019,” a 10-hour festival with performances (including one from tenor great Billy Harper) on four stages in Fairmount Park, directly across the street from the house that ‘Trane shared with his mother and cousin Mary, who passed away earlier this month. The same afternoon, LaRose Supper Club in Germantown will pay homage with local sax legend Bootsie Barnes and others, while the Community Education Center on Sunday will host saxophonists Larry Price and Immanuel Wilkins. Twice over the weekend, local jazz historian Faye Anderson will lead walking tours of Green Book sites related to Coltrane. — Shaun Brady

Philadelphia Jazz Project’s Celebrate Coltrane, noon to 10 p.m., Saturday, across from the Coltrane House at 33rd and Oxford Streets, free, philajazzproject.org; a Tribute to John Coltrane, 2 to 5 p.m., Saturday, LaRose Supper Club, 5531 Germantown Ave., $40, facebook.com/nuestraightahead; Philadelphia Jazz Heritage Walking Tour: Green Book Edition, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday, the Bellevue, 200 S. Broad St., $15, all-that-philly-jazz.ticketleap.com; Larry Price Quartet and Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, 5 p.m., Sunday, Community Education Center, 3500 Lancaster Ave., 215-387-1911, cecarts.org

A Tribute to The Beatles’ White Album tour with Todd Rundgren, Micky Dolenz, etc.

Upper Darby’s Todd Rundgren told me not so long ago that The Beatles’ White Album — the Fab Four’s two-LP, four-sided 1968 opus known for its separation anxiety rather than its union of the band — is not his favorite of theirs. “But, even a not-so-great-album of the Beatles is better than everyone else at their best.” With that, Rundgren takes on a handful of soulful John Lennon songs, while crooner Christopher Cross performs the nice Paul McCartney tunes. The rest is for The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz, Badfinger’s Joey Molland, and others to figure out. This promises to be intriguing, for sure. — A.D. Amorosi

9 p.m., Saturday, Golden Nugget Atlantic City Hotel, Casino & Marina, 600 Huron Ave., Atlantic City, N.J., $55-$65, goldennugget.com; also Oct. 15 at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside

Philly Music Fest

In its third year, the nonprofit Philly Music Fest takes place in three clubs around town and presents a wide range of Philadelphia sounds. Rock standouts include Thin Lips, Ali Awan, Speedy Ortiz, and RFA; hip-hop is heard from with Ill Doots and Sammus; and something wonderfully strange will happen when Man Man and the Sun Ra Arkestra are on the same bill. — D.D.

7:30, Wednesday, MilkBoy Philly, 1100 Chestnut St.; 9 p.m., Thursday, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave.; 5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 27 and 28, World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St.; prices vary per venue, phlmusicfest.com