Catching Up with The Brothers Footman

From rock to pop to country, Indianapolis band The Brothers Footman are all about making their own blend of homegrown Hoosier tunes.

“We’re just taking what we like from different genres, lyric patterns and motifs, putting it together, and it’s just funky,” says Joshua “Bubby” Footman. “With all the years we’ve been doing this, it’s exciting to be working on the project we’re working on now. I know it’s something special.”

Consisting of brothers Dikembe Footman on guitar, Gerald “G Man” Footman on piano and percussion, Joshua “Bubby” Footman on drums and Micah “Sauce” Footman on bass, The Brothers Footman organically interchange harmonies in a way that only siblings can, crafting a uniquely soulful sound highlighted by four voices united.

As the band continues work on their forthcoming project, our Seth Johnson caught up with The Brothers Footman at their home studio for an interview, discussing the band’s roots, life during quarantine and what they have planned on the horizon. Read their conversation below and be sure to catch a special edition of MFT’s Local Music Hour on 99.1 WQRT hosted by The Brothers Footman in September.

SETH JOHNSON: Can you tell me about your upbringing and the role music played in your younger years?

SAUCE: We got the background from church. Our father was the music director, and he played almost every instrument. And then, our mom was the choir director, so she would handle the voices. You had to either sing or play, or you couldn’t be in the family. We happened to do both. [laughs]

With the gospel background, you learn a lot of different genres. And then, when you grow up riding in the car with your dad, he’s listening to jazz. The first time I started going to public school I heard Biggie over Herb Alpert on “Hypnotize,” and I was like, “Hold on. This is the same song I play in the car with my dad, but he’s like, ‘Nah, don’t listen to no rap.’” I just saw that you could do whatever you want to do in music. It’s a blank canvas. You just take some of this, some of that and start painting.

BUBBY: Growing up, we mostly experienced two different genres. Jazz because it was mostly instrumentation, and gospel because that’s what was accepted. But once we got a little older and could experience some different genres like pop, country and rock, we were like, “Hmm.”

DIKEMBE: And then there was Outkast. My mom would send me to the grocery store on Sundays, and I had to drive her car. I snuck in an Outkast CD, and I would always put it in the car. I’d be like, “Y’all, ride with me.” We would take the longest route, and we would always forget stuff on purpose. [laughs] Since there weren’t cellphones, she couldn’t call me for something else. So she’d be like, “I need you to go back and get this,” and we’d be like, “Alright, we’re on it!” We would just take our time with the windows down bumping Outkast.

SETH JOHNSON: When did you all first play music together, and what did that look like?

SAUCE: The first time we played together was like 2017.

BUBBY: You mean as a band…we were making noise before that. 3410 Brentwood Avenue was the address. I remember banging, and then banging turned into music. [laughs]

SAUCE: We made the noise organized later on.

SETH JOHNSON: What prompted the official start of Brothers Footman as a band?

BUBBY: One time, we were just at a job we worked at. We went to lunch, and we were talking about the music scene and what consistently sells. We were like, “Maybe we should try to gear some music towards what can consistently be bought.” So then, we just tried to experiment with stuff like country, pop and rock, mixing it and seeing what we came up with.

DIKEMBE: I was being over-influenced by some certain styles. But as I was able to mix it in with my brothers and the stuff they were doing and as we became better musicians, we started making some of this and some of that. It’s actually stuff people listen to now, and they’re like, “Don’t get me wrong. When y’all play covers, I like it, but I love your original music.”

SAUCE: I think that was the thing that made all of us realize we could really do something with it. We released one song, and a lot of people jumped to it. It was like, “We may have something here. Let’s dive down the rabbit hole and see what we find.” The more we went, the more it started to snowball. It was like, “Okay. We’ve gotta lock some stuff down. Let’s turn it into high gear and see what we can really accomplish.” We’ve got one life to live. Let’s have some fun. We like having fun.

SETH JOHNSON: You mentioned that first original song you wrote that people gravitated toward. What was that?

SAUCE: It was called “Country Sky.” I think they were in love with the harmonies of it. We released that, and then people were like, “Hey. Can you come do a three-hour show?” We were like, “Man, what? Are we going to sing this song for three hours?” [laughs by all]

DIKEMBE: We started booking shows, and we didn’t even have enough music to play. We had to catch up to it.

BUBBY: At first, there were more of us. We had different band members and people we were trying to implement in this to make it to where the perception of it already was. But at the end of the day, as far as dedication, we know we can depend on each other because we’ve been doing that since we were young. So we just locked it in with us four.

G MAN: Yeah. We were like 10 or 11 people deep when we first started. We had a whole band, and we were up front singing.

SAUCE: Eventually, we were just like, “Let’s do it together. Let’s Jackson 4 it, put some choreography in there and do something that’s not being done right now.” It’s almost a lost art right now, but I think it’s one of those classic things that’ll always work.

SETH JOHNSON: Where were some of your earlier shows as a band, and how did those go?

G MAN: We have been as far west as San Francisco, as far as east as New York and as far south as New Orleans. We’ve honestly been everywhere. We had to go a lot of places away from home to get our feet wet and test our chops.

For our first show ever, we did an open mic night at Pinheads in Noblesville. That was a 15 or 20-minute set. Now, especially since it’s been us, it’s like, “Okay, we’ve got two hours? Let’s make it happen.” But even in that process, the smaller we’ve gotten [as a band], the greater the opportunities have become. Both people in and outside of the band say this: you can’t take everybody through that next door. And we realized that. As soon as we cut back, the more things started to open up with the band. Especially once they saw that it was us playing and singing and that we are actually brothers. The shows we’re getting now are on bigger and better stages, so we’re seeing our work pay off, which is dope. In 2021, being back on stage has been a sigh of relief.

DIKEMBE: It’s like I’m breathing again.

SETH JOHNSON: How did you project Bigger Than the Beatles come together?

SAUCE: We released “Country Sky,” and with the attention that it got, it was really supply and demand. People started wanting to come see us out, and we were like, “We gotta have something to give ‘em, so we need to make some more songs.” But it was rushed a little bit. We had some good concepts and some great songs. Those are some of the songs people still love us for: “Lil Moe Time,” “Indiana,” “NGA,” “4MULA.”

DIKEMBE: We’ve got some bangers on there. The thing is we do better on stage — people even say that to us.

SAUCE: Our recording was very rushed, so we didn’t get to get it together.

BUBBY: With Bigger Than the Beatles, we recorded in abandoned houses and anywhere we could go to make noise and not get in trouble. We would take our whole setup, plug it in and do it there. So the acoustics were different on certain songs and everything wasn’t phonically right. But the feeling and the ideas were there, and that was enough to get people’s attention. As far as the title, that was our mindset.

DIKEMBE: That was the way we talked to each other. We would say that to each other as encouragement to really keep burning down this trail. Because it’s a new trail. I know every band probably says that, but people legitimately can’t put us in a category. They’re always amazed by what it sounds like when we start playing and they’ve never seen us before.

We knew what we had long before the sound came to fruition. We all knew what each other was feeling about what we were writing and practicing. So Bigger Than the Beatles was so much more than that first album — it’s really the way we talked to each other.

SETH JOHNSON: Was the pandemic a productive time for you all as a band?

G MAN: First and foremost, the pandemic gave us a lot of me time. Coming back together, you can tell that everybody spent that me time doing what they were supposed to be doing, which was practicing. We understand this is four [equal contributors]. It’s four on input. It’s four on production. It’s four on lyrics. People have asked, “How do you guys write?” Somebody may have a melody or a beat, but it’s always four. That’s how we’ve always looked at it.

So the pandemic gave us that time to get sharper individually, and now we’re coming back as four just sharpening and cutting. With this next project, we’re very excited because we’ve been able to take our time. We’ve been able to hone our instruments. We’ve been able to sing more, listen to each and make sure you hear what you’re supposed to. That’s what the pandemic gave us. It gave us the time we needed to be able to step up.

BUBBY: We’re also taking all of our show experience and what people gravitate toward on stage and putting that into writing. The first album, we didn’t have that experience to know, “Oh, that’s what people like.” We just did what we liked, and people seemed to like that too. Now, we’re incorporating that with all the shows we’ve seen and other bands that rocked or did something specifically. In retrospect, we’ve watched, taken everything we need for us to be who we need to be and put that back in the band.

G MAN: It’s a melting pot.

SETH JOHNSON: Lastly, can you tell me what you guys have coming up on the near horizon?

SAUCE: We’re wrapping up this project that we’re working on right now. We’re definitely going to be dropping some singles from that. We had to slow down and not accept shows so we could make sure we round this project off. As far as shows we do have booked, we have Rev Indy [on July 31].

BUBBY: We’re going to be shooting some visuals and getting a project ready for next year too. This is just something to get people ready for what we’re going to be dropping next year. You’ve gotta show consistency in what you do. You can do a 360 dunk one time, but can you do it again? So we’re just going to show you that this is the norm. People may not know that of us, but we’re going to make sure they know that.