Parker Shogren – DONEFOR

Parker Shogren – DONEFOR

By: Lori Smerilson Carson

Great teachers love to share their knowledge and when that teacher is also a musician, he is Parker Shogren.  Working throughout the year teaching sixth and eighth grade Social Studies, he is no stranger to society and its functions. Sticking to his childhood wishes of playing music with a band, he has strived to entertain Floridians and is definitely making his mark in local and state communities. This extraordinarily talented musician has had many amazing experiences locally and also nationally, and now with his incredible band DONEFOR, they are taking hold of and truly imprinting on the music scene in North, Central and South Florida.

Catching up with Shogren just prior to the end of the school year, he provided some details of his past experiences in the hopes of helping other musicians, as well as divulging details about DONEFOR, their music, and what fans can look forward to.

SFL Music Magazine: You’re a teacher, but what inspired you to become a musician? How did this come together?

Parker Shogren: When I was in school myself, music was something that I started enjoying. It helped me a lot through school, and I played guitar all the time. I always wanted to be in a band and it never happened.  I always wanted just people I could play with. I ended up getting really good at guitar, but never had anyone to play music with. So, it always would be myself, and I took a break from it in high school to do some sports. Then in my freshman year of college, I kind of got back into it and there were still no bands. By the time I was close to graduating, I kind of went full send and just started doing music on my own, and then one layer after another, turned into stuff.

SFL Music Magazine: Is that when you made the BEFORE AFTER album?

Shogren: Yeah. So that stuff was awful (he laughed). It was just me going into a studio with no clue how to do it, and how many people tell you how difficult that is for a first time. It’s really a lot of stuff that you’ve got to know. A lot of people have knowledge in the music industry of it, but if you’re a normal person, you usually don’t. So, I kind of recorded that stuff. Then I was like ok, recorded music blah blah, blah, and I sent that out to as many people as I could. Looked out to try to make contacts and friends with every radio station. Only one replied back and said, “well, this stuff’s not good for the radio. I can offer you a spot on a song that’s gonna get airplay soon. So, if you wanted to sing a chorus on that?” I’m like, sick! Then they let me play guitar, and then they gave me creative ownership of it. Then from there said, wait, why don’t I just find people to play with? I found one at the gym that I worked out with and then his friend played drums, and I had two friends of roommates of mine learn instruments. Then we played an Eagle Radio Fest at the college of FGCU. After that, kind of added members who knew how to play, and then just keep going from that.

SFL Music Magazine: Is that how DONEFOR came together?

Shogren: Yeah, DONEFOR was originally me, my friend Zachery Lulf, and then my friend Riley Stewart, and he played drums at the time. Then eventually, it was still under my name and then we added a drummer and then a bassist. Then after four or five months of doing that we said, why don’t we just take the stuff you made Parker, turn it into songs that are like full band, and then write some new stuff where it would be me writing it and then we put it together as a band. Then we had the DONEFOR thing start up in November of 2022. That’s when I messaged you all because I came back from a tour with a band that doesn’t exist anymore. Within like two months, I went from not ever recording, to recording a crappy EP. Then getting one song on the radio which I thought at the time was the coolest thing ever. So, with having no knowledge, getting a song on the radio was the coolest thing. And then went on tour, played guitar with a band, and then we went up and played throughout Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indianapolis. Then played a major festival and I thought that experience is cool, and I came back into my own band stuff and I was like, let me message everyone. I used to add my stuff to you guys (SFL Music Magazine) online data base all the time when I was working at the gym. I think I was trying to see who was writing. Who was doing this, and I think I emailed Debbie (Brautman) years ago saying, hey this is me starting my music stuff, but I feel like I have a lot of things that could help beginners. Then two years later, no one ever opens it. I understand. I have friends in radio and they tell me you got to make friends with these people obviously, to work with people you like. There’re so many bands messaging people all the time. So, it’s kind of hard to break through that. People from years ago, are now circling back either because we are starting to do stuff now that’s really cool, or it just happens like that. We’re like oh sick, this is actually a good time because now we can actually share some cool stories.

SFL Music Magazine: I did read in that message to her that you opened for Breaking Benjamin, Papa Roach and Korn. What would you say you took away from that experience?

Shogren: We played one show with that. It was an Inkcarceration Festival in Ohio. For that experience, it felt like being famous for a day in the sense of just playing for a large crowd and outside so nice, and people who wanted to genuinely hear the music. That’s when I was with a different band and I thought, wow! If I had my own band, we would take this and just build up off of it. I mean, I remember walking around that festival, people would stop us all day for photos. I’m like dude, I want to do this. This is fun. The band started with that. There’s no scene where we are in Southwest Florida. That’s where we’re located. We’re spread across Jupiter now too, so all over Florida it seems. It started off by playing like pizza shops that we would make our own shows. I’d make my own shows having bands buy in, in the sense of like, hey, if you trust us, we’ll make a fun show. Get your people, get ours and then kind of made a community down here of doing that. These shows, I was planning, running, promoting. Started building from like fifteen to twenty to thirty, forty, fifty, so on and so on. We started getting more people looking to play us and what not. We’re still learning how to be a band. Then we had an album release show I think in August of last year. That’s when we released the album (SLEEP ON IT). So, we already had a song that was on the radio doing really well called “You’re Welcome”. It’s got I think one-hundred-forty thousand streams now. It’s been on the radio for a bit, like over I think ninety-eight stations in America. It’s cool. A lot of people seem to know it wherever we go. We had a sold-out album release show. Where we had to turn away two-hundred people at the door. That was probably the coolest feeling in my life because it was like there was no help from really anyone else, from promoters. Promoters are so important in music, but we don’t really have down south, especially few and far between. Now, we just played a festival with Subline and 311 and all these bands we grew up listening to. It’s like that same feeling of what I had two years ago, but with starting from ground zero with a band going on now.

SFL Music Magazine: What can fans look forward to with the new music?

Shogren: The ones we do now are like half singing fun songs. We have music I feel like everyone can enjoy from like singing stuff to there’s a saxophone in one even. It’s like nice, happy pop, funk, Blink-182, easier listening stuff, to like some screamo stuff. It’s weird. Our set’s ADHD music, but it seems to be people take a song that they like. So, that’s what we really try.

SFL Music Magazine: What would you say inspires your music when you write?

Shogren: I do most of the writing. I just kind of pick a genre, and we go there and collectively create it, but it’s mostly me making guitar riffs and then adding it together. We have really a weird thing. We have five members. One listens to hard rock and normal radio rock. Another listens to like hard, metal, screamo stuff. I listen to like anything from 2006 to 2008. I love all music from that. Our drummer doesn’t even listen to this type of music. He likes jazz. He doesn’t know pop bands. He doesn’t know anything. He is in his own world of jazz. He just fell into this with us and he still doesn’t know the genre very well. He’s still learning. He’s a killer drummer. He’s a really good drummer, but it’s so funny because he doesn’t even really listen to the music we play. Then our bassist listens to like ska and punk. Think of everything in California.

SFL Music Magazine: Are you all still doing the Flohana Fest in July?

Shogren: Yeah. We sometimes now do some of the shows where I set up, and what we’re doing is in Cocoa Beach I think May 18^th, we’re throwing a kind of do it yourself, think of MTV Beach House Party that they used to have. We’re full on the waterfront with like a beach there. I have four bands that I like from over the state, including us. The idea is just music for all ages. Everyone come. Cool party, Kayaks. It’s going to be a fun event that we think should go pretty well.

SFL Music Magazine: Are you going to do more touring in the state?

Shogren: Yeah. It’s kind of hard because what sucks for us is, we play these big shows and they do really well and we sell a ton of tickets, but then where we are, you’ve got to still be friends with the promoters as I said. So, Orlando, Tampa, Miami are all huge, and the promoters are going to put the bands that they are more vested in. The ones they know. Their friends and stuff like that.  I feel annoyed. I’m like hey, hey. How are you guys doing? We played this show. Can we do this please? Promise it will go good, blah, blah, blah, but they give preference to the people they usually work with which is fine. It’s hard to break that barrier. So, we’ll go from playing a five hundred, seven hundred person show, to then be looking to play a show with maybe like fifty and sixty. I mean, we’ve got to be picky in some sense. We don’t really like the do it yourself shows anymore because it’s like, we just played a huge festival in Orlando. We played a show with a newer band called Sleep Theory. We sold I think, a hundred and eighty tickets to that one. That was a magical show for us, but it’s kind of hard to break out of this area and get into these new areas. So, I know we have an Orlando show on a Thursday in June. The next day I think we’re doing Gainesville. So, we’re doing mini runs throughout Florida.

SFL Music Magazine: That’s good for people to keep their eyes open for.

Shogren: Yes.

SFL Music Magazine: You mentioned sharing your experiences to help beginners. What would you recommend to a new musician?

Shogren: Well, the one radio station that gave me a chance is the only reason I’m able to do this. The knowledge they bestowed on me is always the greatest stuff I wish that everyone can hear. It’s a non-profit charity radio station called The Call Radio. Our friend Jed Brewer is a programmer for it and he runs a charity called Good Loud Media. He uses music to provide good moral living to everyone in the sense of like hey, music can get you out of a rough time. The knowledge he shares with us that I want to keep passing on is, you want to get on people’s good sides in the sense of people want to enjoy the people they work with. So, making connections is so important in the sense of, genuinely care about other people’s stuff. Genuinely care how to help others. It will come back to you to help, you know, yourself. Another thing would be, learn how to do everything yourself. It’s so different. The music scene has changed in, I think of even ten years now to where, being good at music isn’t enough anymore, and you got to learn how to promote. Learn how to advertise. Learn how to sell yourself. Learn how to create things. Don’t even do with music anymore. It’s like selling a brand. It’s a business at that point, so the more you can do, the less it costs to hire other people to do it. As dumb and as cheesy as it sounds, supporting the local scene is the most important thing. Some people view it as a competition when it’s nothing like that at all. Music to me is entertainment. People always want something they can take away from it at the end. Not many people remember every song or every note, but they’ll remember moments, and that’s why you go to shows or go to anything in general. It doesn’t matter what music. That transcends through most things in life. So, with that, you want to create a scene where your bands love supporting each other, so that way fans can go for these moments that they share with others and more people go. Creating a scene that people want to go and be entertained and be a part of, is only going to help each other. So, it’s not so much me and my band. It’s us hoping every band does well and what can we do to support the scene instead of ourselves? That way, everybody wins in some regard. Like, we won an Instagram contest by getting thousands and thousands and thousands of votes. It blew me away. All the way from Malaysia to here. From fans across the world for us that we’re like astonished by, and that’s how we got to play that big festival in Orlando. It was all of our band friends. All of our promoter fans, and all that stuff. We would do the same for them and we’ve done it other times. So, it’s creating a scene that people want to support each other in.

SFL Music Magazine: That’s excellent advice!  What should fans look forward to from DONEFOR?

Shogren: When they go to our shows, we try to leave moments. Whether it’s the live energy onstage or meeting every fan, or trying to socialize with everyone as much as possible. That’s kind of how we’ve built these great shows and a good music community. These fans bring their signs and everything now, and people are starting to get tattoos which is wild to me.

SFL Music Magazine: Tattoos?

Shogren: Yeah. Well, we give out fun little promotional tattoos, but now people are like, yeah, your band means so much. I’m like, ok. People love us. There’re normal fans and now there’s fans where the music means something, and that’s the greatest I think you can do with music. I mean, just trying to share what we love to people who possibly can reciprocate the music for their own love of something. Whatever it means to them.