SWFL band DONEFOR to open for Sublime, 311 and Goldfinger at Orlando music festival

DONEFOR, a Fort Myers-based quintet founded by former Florida Gulf Coast University students, is preparing for the performance of a lifetime.

Only two years after their inception, they are opening for Sublime, 311 and Goldfinger at Brightside Music Festival in Orlando.

The pop-punk metalcore band was formed in 2022 and was founded by Parker Shogren, a former FGCU student and now middle school teacher. He signed up for FGCU’s annual Eagle Radio Music Festival with recorded songs but no band.

Wanting to perform, he asked a few of his FGCU friends, and thus, DONEFOR was born.

Since then, the band has released an album, “Sleep On It,” and they have garnered 140,000 streams on their hit song, “You’re Welcome,” on Spotify, which Grammy award-winning music engineer Vlado Meller mastered.

• READ MORE ABOUT DONEFOR: Southwest Florida band DONEFOR celebrates over 100,000 streams on Spotify

Their songs have been played on the radio, and the band has consistently performed at local and statewide venues. And now, they have the opportunity of a lifetime.

In their early days, they would be thrilled if ten people showed up to one of their shows. Now, they’re on the heels of their biggest performance yet, opening for Sublime.

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“I don’t think, eight years looking back, I would have ever been able to imagine that we’d be playing on a huge stage with Sublime at a festival,” said Zachary Lulf, DONEFOR’s lead guitarist and Screamo vocalist.

DONEFOR had to beat out hundreds of other bands in a competition that also included a social media poll to be one of a handful of bands performing during the music fest.

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“One of the coolest things that we found from this competition is we had people from Indonesia even voting for us and leaving comments, and we didn’t realize our music reached that far, so it was really cool,” Lulf said.

Shogren said he grew up listening to the bands he’ll be performing with this weekend.

“I grew up teaching people how to surf. Everybody surfed, so we listened to Sublime 311, Goldfinger, Story of the Year, Zebrahead and all these bands every single day,” Shogren said.

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In a way, DONEFOR will be representing Southwest Florida during this monumental moment.

“I’m gonna meet all these people. I’m gonna be able to tell my mom that I played a show with all these great bands. It’s just something you can’t make up or really put into words,” Shogren said.

We asked the band how they would describe their music to someone who’s never heard of them.

They said imagine being at a skate park in 2007 and that pop-punk and metalcore is their bread and butter.

The music festival will be this Saturday in Orlando at the Central Florida Fairgrounds.

DONEFOR’s performance starts just after noon.

Here are the band members:

• Parker Shogren (Lead vocals, Guitar) 
• Riley Stewart (Co-Lead vocals, Guitar)
• Zachary Lulf (Guitar, vocals)
• Leo Cartelli (Bass)
• Christian Molina (Drums)

Click here to learn more about DONEFOR.

Find them on social media @donefor_band.