An outdoor performance photograph by Ray Roa showing the band Peli Gene playing Sparkman Wharf during Gasparilla Music Festival in Tampa, Florida on April 12, 2026. Captured in a medium shot on an outdoor stage, the musician stands center stage singing into a microphone attached to a stand with a guitar strapped across their body. They wear a short-sleeved light blue short-sleeved collared shirt with a subtle floral print, blue jeans, and has curly dark brown hair and a mustache. In the background behind a wooden slat backdrop, a drummer sits at a drum kit on the left while a Hartke amplifier head rests on a cabinet on the right under outdoor stage lighting. — Peli Gene plays Sparkman Wharf during Gasparilla Music Festival in Tampa, Florida on April 12, 2026. Credit: Ray Roa / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Last April at the Sparkman Wharf stage, Peli Gene made its Gasparilla Music Festival debut with anthemic, bouncy indie-rock that sounds like the feeling of pulling off a sweatshirt on a cold day turned perfectly-sunny.

The Tampa-based band headlines Rock the Park in support of an April release, Dream Estate. Songwriter Sunde returns to the park after getting rained out last month, with Geoff Abraham & Finn Walling playing a set of bluesy rock in the opening slot.

There’s no cover to see Peli Gene, Sunde, and Geoff Abraham & Finn Walling Rock the Park at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in Tampa on Thursday, Oct. 1.

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This article appears in Sept. 24 – 30, 2026.