Philadelphia marks an early turning point for The Six: a festival opportunity there prompted Karen to name the six-member group, and the resulting show led to more bookings nearby. The evidence identifies no specific Philadelphia venue, but establishes the city as the place where a practical question about what to print on a flyer became part of the band’s identity.

Setting and booking

Philadelphia was Karen’s hometown. A local booker called her after The Winters withdrew from a festival there and asked whether her band wanted to fill the opening. Karen accepted, while making clear that the group was no longer called the Dunne Brothers. When the booker asked what name to put on the flyer, she said she would bring the six of them. The exchange connected a hometown opportunity to the band’s still-unsettled public identity.

The name and the show

Karen liked how The Six sounded, and the name took hold around the Philadelphia performance. The choice was practical as well as memorable: it identified the group by its number of members, while Warren Rhodes later recalled that its closeness in sound to the word sex gave it an additional, suggestive appeal. Billy disputed that this was intentional, while Graham considered the association significant; the recollections leave the name’s double meaning unsettled rather than resolving it.

Regional consequences

After playing in Philadelphia as The Six, the band was offered another show in town, then dates in Harrisburg and Allentown, followed by a New Year’s Eve booking at a bar in Hartford. The group was not making much money, but the Philadelphia appearance helped establish a run of further work. The city’s significance in the band’s early history is therefore both local and structural: it supplied the occasion on which a new name was used and the first step in a growing circuit of performances.