Capable Of

Our name implies a vital question that everyone should be asking themselves, all the time; "What am I Capable Of?"  Making this music is our answer to that.  And it's not perfect - it will never be perfect.  We will never be perfect.  But this music comes from a place of passion; it's authentic and genuine, so we're pretty proud of it.

We're brothers who share more than a last name; when it comes to making music, Mike is the singer/songwriter frontman and Tommy bangs the drums.  Moving through life as best friends while working on our respective musical crafts, we have been there for each other's highs and lows - from standing together in weddings to fighting against the devastating effects of cancer.  Drawing from these life events inspires our work.

This is not the stage in life that most artists decide creating music has to be a staple in their worlds; both of us in our 30s with a toddler on the scene.  Both of us went the route that many kids who grow up in the suburbs follow, going off to college and taking our place in corporate America.  As the years passed, we both felt that something was missing from following the well-trodden path.  While we both played our instruments regularly and occasionally wrote ideas, when Tommy returned home from college and Mike was living in Houston, we started taking the thought of writing a record seriously and embarked on our music journey in 2012, forming For Those Capable Of.  

Our debut album, Self Reliance, is about the ups and downs of going through something tough; struggling, being lost, and surviving.  Even the process of making the record has mirrored that dichotomy, as its creation spanned eight years and three states, with the two of us living over 2000 miles away from each other for the entirety of the recording process.  While some of the early songs were created in our dad's turbine refurbishment industrial warehouse (our practice space for many years), the bulk of the album was completed with Mike writing his concepts in Colorado and New Jersey, sending the Pro Tools files to Tommy in Texas to record drum takes, then shipping the files back to the East Coast to record bass, guitar, keys and vocals.  We shared the sound engineering, mixing, and mastering responsibilities.  We've poured over dozens of books, hundreds of hours of videos, and gone through thousands of hours of trial and error to arrive at the sounds you hear through your speakers or headphones.  The end result, Self Reliance, has been years in the making and authentically tells the stories of love, loss, friction, and the battles with internal demons as a person grows to be something more than they were before.

Drawing from influences of early aughts rock, alt rock, and funk, we find inspiration from the early works of Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Incubus, Coheed & Cambria, Brand New, Counting Crows, My Chemical Romance, The Used, The Wonder Years, The Dangerous Summer, Yellowcard, Matchbook Romance, 311, Anberlin, Pierce The Veil, The Receiving End of Sirens, Rise Against, Say Anything, Senses Fail, blink-182, Story of the Year, Thrice, Thursday, and John Mayer (Continuum is a masterpiece).  Without these artists doing what they loved, we wouldn't have followed them into the world of creating and sharing the music and stories that move us.  We are forever grateful for their work, and for you listening to ours; we hope to move you, too.