Jake Dillon was just goofing around with his girlfriend when his musical alter ego was born. Knowing her mother hailed from Delaware County, he started riffing on the region’s distinctive accent, dropping “youse” and “hun” in between his garbled Os. The bit continued and pretty soon, Dillon was picking up his guitar and hitting record on a cover of “You Found Me” by the Fray — performed as a dude from Delco.
That was just a few months ago. Now, “Delco Donny” is a social media sensation. His covers of “Champagne Supernova,” “Creep” and “Closing Time” have each cracked over 100,000 views on TikTok, where he boasts over 1 million likes. His fame has been spurred in part by his preferred stage: Wawa parking lots. Since early November, Delco Donny has been spotted in Aston, Huntingdon Valley and other locations across the five counties. Last Sunday, he played a publicized pop-up show at the Wawa on Chichester Avenue in Boothwyn. He said a crowd of roughly 100 people was waiting in the parking lot when he arrived.
“These fans look at me like I’m Noah Kahan,” Dillon, 29, said with a laugh. “That is the way they were behaving. … At one point I was like, ‘Can someone run in and grab me a tea for my throat?’ and there were just people running to go get it.”…