What’s next for Japanese Breakfast? First, a Philly benefit with the Eagles’ Connor Barwin.

It’s been a remarkable year for Michelle Zauner.

Last July, the artist who performs as Japanese Breakfast was getting set to hit the road in support of her third album, Jubilee, while also garnering attention for Crying in H Mart, her memoir about food, her Korean American identity, and her relationship with her late mother, Chongmi.

It’s gone rather well. In August Japanese Breakfast played five sold-out shows at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, and the club named the room where she used to work the Michelle Zauner Coat Check.

Other career milestones followed. The singer-guitarist was nominated for two Grammys, including best new artist, and was the musical guest on the May season finale of Saturday Night Live.

Now, Japanese Breakfast is on a summer tour that will bring the 33-year-old Bryn Mawr College graduate to the Dell Music Center on Saturday, July 23, to headline a benefit for former Philadelphia Eagle Connor Barwin’s nonprofit Make the World Better Foundation.

It marks MTWB’s return to the Strawberry Mansion open-air venue for the first time since 2019. Hoboken, N.J., indie legends Yo La Tengo and Welsh musician Cate Le Bon are opening.

“This is definitely our biggest Philly show,” Zauner says. “I feel like, ashamed almost, that Yo La Tengo are supporting us. My manager pitched it to me and I was like, Are you crazy? It’s the best bill that I could think of.”

Zauner was speaking via Zoom from Brooklyn, where she lives with her guitarist husband, Peter Bradley, who plays in Japanese Breakfast. Among the artworks on the wall was one created by her mother, who took up painting late in life.

“It’s so surreal,” Zauner says, speaking of the never-imagined experiences that have come with increased popularity, from getting her photo taken with Korean band BTS at the Grammys to being named one of Time’s 100 influential people.

“When you reach a new height,” says Zauner, who is working on finishing edits on the screenplay she’s writing for the movie adaptation of Crying in H Mart, “you’re like, ‘What is going to expose me to not deserving to be here? Someone’s going to find me out. I’m going to sing flat, or I’m going to do something [messed] up.’ ”

In time, Zauner got over that angst. “I’m very confident in the band at this point. The show is what it is, and I am who I am. It’s like, this is where you’re at now. So this is an exciting time for me to actually enjoy touring again.”

Landing Zauner — or Jbrekkie, as she’s known to her hundreds of thousands of online followers — as headliner is an excellent get for Barwin. The avid music enthusiast put on his first benefit for MTWB, which partners with Philadelphia communities to revitalize public spaces and recreational facilities, with Kurt Vile at Union Transfer in 2013.

“We’ve been trying to do a show with Michelle for a long time,” Barwin said, talking last week at the Vare Recreation Center in the Point Breeze section of South Philadelphia, where MTWB is managing the construction of a new $20 million rec center.

Barwin and Union Transfer booker Sean Agnew planned for Japanese Breakfast to be this year’s MTWB early in 2021, before the release of Jubilee and Crying in H Mart, the acutely intelligent and emotional book that’s turned Zauner into a literary star. It’s been a New York Times best seller for 50 weeks.

“I was a fan,” says Barwin, sitting on a folding chair within safe distance of the demolition of a crumbling brick structure at Vare.

“But I didn’t know she was going to be on this run,” says Barwin, who lives in Fishtown and is in charge of player development for the Eagles. “I didn’t know she’d be doing all the late night TV and SNL. I didn’t know about her book until after we booked the show. And her book is amazing.”

Zauner worked for Agnew’s company R5 Productions when she was hustling to make it with her band Little Big League.

The Japanese Breakfast show at the Dell hasn’t quite sold out yet, but it’s close to the amphitheater’s seating capacity of 5,344.

The promoter said he’s not surprised at JB’s drawing power. “Japanese Breakfast’s star is only rising,” he says. “I can’t imagine what’s going to happen when album number 4, book number two, and movie number one come out.”

Working on those projects requires a disciplined division of Zauner’s time. First up is finishing the screenplay.

» READ MORE: Michelle Zauner of Philly’s Japanese Breakfast has a new memoir born of grief and a new album full of joy

She read screenplays for movies like Ladybird, The Farewell, “and Almost Famous, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.” Zauner also looked at Sideways. “It’s a love of wine instead of a love of food. And I love all Noah Baumbach’s screenplays.”

“I thought it would come naturally and would be a lot easier. But it’s found its own unique way to torture me,” she says with a laugh.

After a tour that will take her to Europe, Japan, and Korea, she’ll write a new album.

With 2018′s Soft Sounds From Another Planet, “I really enjoyed singing and hyping up the crowd as a front person, and I think I leaned too far into that on Jubilee. So now I would like to write more songs where I’m back on the guitar,” she says.

And then? The next book.

“It will definitely be another nonfiction book. I think it will be quite different than Crying in H Mart. I don’t think it will be as vulnerable and raw, but it will be very personal and come from the heart.”

For the Dell show, the fund-raising goal is $250,000, and Barwin said that the amount will be surely be reached because he and his wife Laura are planning to donate $100,000 to put it over the top.

“ I’ve always been committed to build things. I’ve been to developing countries and seen how bad things are, and I grew up in Detroit and I’ve seen how bad things are there,” says Barwin. ”And I live in Philly. ... So I feel like where I live is where I can make the most difference.”

The Vare Recreation project is by far the biggest that MTWB has been involved in. The budget for the Ralph Brooks Park in Point Breeze was $750,000, Barwin says. Smith Playground in South Philly was $3.2 million. And Waterloo Playground in West Kensington was $2.5 million.

Vare is so much bigger “because we’re not only knocking down an existing building, but building a brand new one.”

The Vare building will be replaced by a 15,000-square-foot facility which Barwin says will open in 2023, along with new outdoor facilities, including a football field donated by the Eagles.

Almost all of the money for the project comes from the city’s Rebuild Philadelphia, which invests in improving parks, recreation centers, and libraries, funded by Mayor Jim Kenney’s hotly contested soda tax. A sign outside the Vare construction site reads: “Made possible by the Philadelphia Beverage Tax.”

“In my opinion, it’s definitely the best thing the mayor has done while he’s been in office,” Barwin says. “It’s been hard. It’s been political. You can make arguments about where the money comes from. But you cannot argue that a massive investment in the parks and recreation infrastructure is needed. You cannot argue that early child education is paramount for kids to have success.”

Speaking of the mayor, Barwin has long been subject of speculation about potentially seeking elected office himself. So, is he going to run for mayor? “Not this cycle,” he says, though not ruling it out in the future. He’s a little too busy at the moment, between MTWB projects; his current Eagles job, which takes up 60 to 70 hours a week in the season; and getting his MBA from Penn’s Wharton School.

The money raised at the Dell will make “a huge difference,” Barwin says. “When you work with the city, all you do is cut the budget. Cut, cut, cut. At some point, we can’t keep cutting. So the city said, ‘You’ve got to bring in some money.’ So that’s where we are.”

For Zauner, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, playing Barwin’s MTWB benefit is a way of connecting to the place where she found herself creatively.

“It’s so cool because we’re not from Philly, but it feels like we are from Philly. It feels very much like a chosen home even though I don’t live there anymore. It’s where I came up. So I feel so indebted to Philadelphia as a city and a community because it supported me in such a crucial time in my life. So it feels really great to be able to do something for the city itself.”

Japanese Breakfast with Yo La Tengo and Cate Le Bon at the Dell Music Center, 2400 Strawberry Mansion Dr., at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, July 23. $40-$75. dellmusiccenter.com.