20 years at the Cafe

'I've got this amazing job where people come in and play music for me," says David Dye, whose World Cafe radio program from WXPN-FM (88.5) has been on the air for a remarkable 20 years. The nationally syndicated, two-hour weekday show is throwing an anniversary celebration capped with three concerts this weekend at World Cafe Live, the West Philadelphia venue that licenses its name from the program.

Over the last two decades, Dye has conducted more than 4,600 interviews with veterans (Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Al Green) and not-yet-popular newcomers (he was ahead of the curve with Sheryl Crow, Norah Jones, and Vampire Weekend, among others). He has showcased artists as diverse as jazz legend Sonny Rollins, Nigerian guitar master King Sunny Ade, and indie-rock favorites TV on the Radio, and has a penchant for locals such as Amos Lee, Birdie Busch, and The War on Drugs.

Since the show debuted on Oct. 14, 1991, World Cafe has expanded its audience in a music business that has changed drastically. It has evolved while staying true to a core format.

"At the very heart, it's new music, with a broad palette of interesting things on the musical landscape that we want people to know about," says Bruce Warren, 'XPN's program director. "We've followed the trends, we've created some trends, but we haven't gone so far to the right or so far to the left.

"There's always been the center to what we do, which is David Dye's interviews and musical performances and a great playlist of up-and-coming musicians that we think are significant."

The World Cafe name, coined by Philly folk impresario Gene Shay, is a holdover from the early planning days when the idea was to focus on world music. That concept didn't test well when the station, operated by the University of Pennsylvania, did audience research here and in Tucson, Ariz.; it came in dead last among formats. What seemed more promising were the "semi-popular singers and songwriters that were not getting played on commercial radio," as Warren describes it.

"Our goal," Dye says, "was to bring some younger people to public radio."

That singer-songwriter focus, built around artists such as Richard Thompson, Bruce Cockburn, and Indigo Girls, became the core of the show, and World Cafe helped spawn the Adult Album Alternative (Triple A) genre, which targets listeners 35 to 54.

According to Jack Barton, of the industry newsletter Friday Morning Quarterback (and a former 'XPN employee), Triple A listeners are defined less by demographic than "psychographic."

"They want to learn about the music that's playing; they want to be connected to these artists," he says. "They want to know what's going on with the artists they love, but they also want to find new artists."

That is exactly what World Cafe has done so well during its tenure, broadening the show beyond the singer-songwriter core, and allowing artists to tell their stories and perform live, which has "helped an awful lot of careers grow," Barton says.

The artists at this weekend's anniversary shows are good examples: John Hiatt, Indigo Girls, and the Little Willies (with Norah Jones) on Friday; Feist and Dawes on Saturday; and Sunday, with a special show for major 'XPN donors, Rhett Miller, Amos Lee, Susan Tedeschi, and Derek Trucks (all shows will be broadcast on 'XPN).

World Cafe itself has grown, from its early days in 'XPN's cramped studio on Penn's campus on Spruce Street to its current state-of-the-art facility on Chestnut, from syndication of only four stations to its current 232 stations reaching 613,900 listeners a week, and from its singer-songwriter-centric playlist to something broad and eclectic enough to encompass British dubstep songwriter James Blake, Merrill Garbus' indie-eccentric project Tune-Yards, and whistling violinist Andrew Bird.

In July 2005, National Public Radio began distributing the two-hour show and the one-hour interview digest Conversations, and that considerably expanded their reach. NPR has also enhanced the show's Web presence by archiving its interviews and making them available on demand. World Cafe has the youngest median age of all NPR programs, a not-so-youthful 51.

"World Cafe is to contemporary music what NPR is to news," says Eric Nuzum, NPR's acting vice president of programming. "They take a very similar approach: They're very focused on discovery and surprise and introducing you to something you're going to love yet never knew existed" in a way that ". . . is revealing and thought-provoking and provides context."

Dye, 61, has been the host throughout the show's history. A Philadelphia radio mainstay since his years playing progressive rock on WMMR in the '70s (and alternative rock on WIOQ in the '80s), Dye came to 'XPN in 1989. For the 20 years of Cafe he has programmed the music for each two-hour show, and he often tapes six interviews a week, with the help of his five-member staff.

The show isn't interested in spotlighting the Next Big Thing, although that sometimes happens.

"When we hear a Norah Jones for the first time, we don't book her because we think she's going to be huge. If we did that, our batting average would be worse than Ryan Howard's during the playoffs," says Warren.

"I see myself more as an aggregator than a tastemaker," Dye says. "I will certainly play things that lead, but I don't want to throw up a lot of things on the show that won't have a lot of traction."

Given his long-term perspective and encyclopedic knowledge, Dye is able to make connections among artists past and present. "A great example is this new London folk revival, people like Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling, who are looking back at people I was growing up with, like Pentangle. . . . It's cool to be able to do shows that draw attention to both of them," Dye says.

Dye's casual yet enthusiastic style as an interviewer and host has made him a favorite of listeners and artists alike.

"People are listening to the World Cafe for the credibility it brings, and are making that leap of faith that if David's talking to whomever today, put any name you want there, there's some reason I want to know about this," says Barton.

"David's real gift is bringing everyone together and making them feel like he's talking to them," says NPR's Nuzum.

The Cafe creates an environment for excellent performances, some of which have been compiled on the 32 volumes of the Live at the World Cafe CD series (a revenue source for the show and station as pledge premiums). Many of the performances are taped before a live audience, so there's a balance between Dye's easygoing interview style and the energy an audience helps to produce.

Taylor Goldsmith of the young Americana band Dawes has done three World Cafe sessions (including one with his side project Middle Brother), and his band will play Saturday at one of the anniversary shows. Goldsmith heard some of the 20th-anniversary Cafe radio shows recently at home in L.A.

"It reminded me of when we did it. It's just so cool. I never hear artists on such a personable level on the radio. I never hear anyone like Aimee Mann sit there with just a guitar and making jokes, then play a song, to that extent," Goldsmith says. "I realize that's what a lot of radio experiences are, you go in and chat and play, but with them it's a whole different thing."

Even after 20 years hosting World Cafe, Dye hasn't tired of discovering and sharing the music he loves, and he recognizes his privileged position in hearing all those bands perform for his show.

"Part of the legacy of these 20 years for me is being able to hear all this incredible music," he says. "I have almost as much enthusiasm for new music as I did in the beginning."