The Bowie Birthday Bash ft. Candy Volcano at Ardmore Music Hall
Friday, January 2, 2026
When you think of the late, great David Bowie, your first thought may not be our fair city, but the fact is that Philly always had a special place in Bowie’s heart, and we always gave the love right back. January 2026 marks the 10th edition of this nine-day festival. Enjoy small concerts, big concerts, DJ nights, art exhibits, readings, and film screenings, all paying tribute to someone who was truly one in a million.
“I was 17 when I first started following David,” Patti Brett told Metro when she began organizing and curating her show of love and appreciation for David Bowie.
Brett is the owner of Doobies Bar at 22nd and Lombard streets, and her obsession with Bowie has been a lifelong experience. After falling in love with Ziggy-era Bowie when he played Philly’s Tower Theatre in 1973, (then the Diamond Dogs Bowie when he hit that venue in 1974), Brett and her glam-dressed pals hung nightly outside N. 12 Street’s Signa Sound Studios while he recorded ‘Young Americans’.
“I couldn’t get into the clubs he would go to when in Philly, so I would go to his hotel. The first time, he was staying at the Bellevue-Stratford,” recalls Brett.
Brett says that Bowie was friendly during that first meeting, and even friendlier the next time, in 1974 when he again rented rooms at the Bellevue for his Tower Theater shows that July.
“David sat with us on the steps of the hotel and told a group of us how much he loved Philly and that during a Diamond Dogs tour break in August that he was going to be recording his next album at Sigma Sound several blocks from the hotel. He said to come back and look for him, so we did.”
When Bowie finished Young American’s recording sessions in Philly, he invited Brett and nine additional glittery friends into that studio for an advanced listening session.
From that moment on, Brett & Co. become known as “the Sigma Kids,” and upon Bowie’s sudden death in January 2016 — two days after his birthday and the release of his final album, ‘Blackstar’ — Brett moved quickly into action to celebrate the Starman – an equal object of obsession for the city of Philadelphia.
