James Droll
For James Droll, music is like a toxic ex, an inevitability. As he quoted — realizing after, with a laugh, that it was from Brokeback Mountain — “I don’t know how to quit you.” Droll grew up in rural Ohio on a llama farm, a conservative upbringing that meant his first experiences with music came in church. It wasn’t until college that he joined a band looking to replace their singer; and as the singer, they said, he was expected to write the songs. On the second EP they put out, he was “screaming about being gay, but no one knew what it was about. I buried it in metaphors.”
In Midwest DIY spirit, the band booked around 28 shows in 30 days, a sort of pace that saw Droll dropping out. Then, as it so often goes, the drummer stole their money and eloped. So for a moment, music was off the table. It was a budding relationship that brought Droll from Ohio to Nashville; though that relationship only lasted a few months into the move, he’s been rooted in Music City ever since. Droll started writing again, an exercise in self-examination: Who am I? Where am I? What was that relationship, and how did I get here?
He recorded seven songs with a loan from his dad, figuring they were the best he had: if they struck a chord, great. And for a while, the songs sat on Spotify at under 1,000 plays. Then, one day in 2017, a song was added to the platform’s Fresh Finds playlist; it amassed over 50,000 plays overnight. The shot in the dark paid off. As his work proliferated, Droll was asked to write songs for Noah Kahan, Joy Oladokun, Matoma, and others. Now, he’s focused on releasing a debut album of work done by and for himself.
“It's difficult for queer artists. There is this cold, callous approach to queerness in arts that it's like, there's no proof of concept for a mainstream audience, right?” Droll said. “Because everyone that is queer in music that is a big household name wasn't out at the time of their big push to pop culture or before they establish themselves within pop culture.” However, Droll has realized through his writing career and collaborations that “there is space for my stories, space for my words, space for my unique take and to not dull myself down and sprinkle little bits of myself in other people's work.”
“From writing with other people, I really figured out what is mine and what I have to offer — mostly, what I'm not willing to give away and have someone else say for me,” Droll said. “My jaded hot take is that I'm tired of co-opting my trauma to make other people more interesting.” Though Droll wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music growing up, his first job at Hot Topic introduced him to some favorites: Manchester Orchestra, The Killers, My Chemical Romance. (“I was a big Warped Tour kid,” he said.)
“I slammed myself into all of that passionate, intense, emotional music because I was deprived of it,” he said. “I was given the Ambien of music, and I'm like, these people have feelings, and they feel big.” Though he’s a bit quieter in his own approach, those big feelings remain. “If comparison is a thief of joy, call an ambulance,” he sings on the single “Nepo Baby,” a plaintive indie folk song making clear his lack of the titular status: “I wasn’t born on Bedford Drive to a prolific composer / My dad worked on the railroad / and my mom worked on herself.”
Droll’s uncanny self-awareness and slight winks to listeners — there are “a lot of early 2000s references” — come across in a combination that’s utterly honest and open.
“[The album is me] reconnecting with my sometimes-I-feel-lost music fam,” Droll said.
Droll’s debut album is about coming to terms with a number of things: who he is, where he is, where he’s been. Is music worth it, or should he go back to college (“I Don’t Wanna Scream” harkens back to that “I-can’t-quit-you” theme)? And what about living in Nashville? The city is one thing; Tennessee is another. His songs address the “struggle of wanting to exist where I want to exist, even if where I exist does not want me there: this feeling of owning my place, owning my role in it.”
He wants his exploration of identity to touch not so much the loud corners but the quiet ones, a representation of queerness he feels is far less expressed. “This next group of songs is like music that would have really hit me If I had heard this when I wasin high school, or if I had heard this when I was in early college: music from a queer artist that isn't just telling me to go out, be proud and, like, love is love,” Droll said. “That's just a string of cliches.”
He wants to bring “more nuance” and “a casual ease” to artistry surrounding his identity: “comfortability in owning your queerness without having to perform it.”
For James Droll, music is like a toxic ex, an inevitability. As he quoted — realizing after, with a laugh, that it was from Brokeback Mountain — “I don’t know how to quit you.” Droll grew up in rural Ohio on a llama farm, a conservative upbringing that meant his first experiences with music came in church. It wasn’t until college that he joined a band looking to replace their singer; and as the singer, they said, he was expected to write the songs. On the second EP they put out, he was “screaming about being gay, but no one knew what it was about. I buried it in metaphors.”
In Midwest DIY spirit, the band booked around 28 shows in 30 days, a sort of pace that saw Droll dropping out. Then, as it so often goes, the drummer stole their money and eloped. So for a moment, music was off the table. It was a budding relationship that brought Droll from Ohio to Nashville; though that relationship only lasted a few months into the move, he’s been rooted in Music City ever since. Droll started writing again, an exercise in self-examination: Who am I? Where am I? What was that relationship, and how did I get here?
He recorded seven songs with a loan from his dad, figuring they were the best he had: if they struck a chord, great. And for a while, the songs sat on Spotify at under 1,000 plays. Then, one day in 2017, a song was added to the platform’s Fresh Finds playlist; it amassed over 50,000 plays overnight. The shot in the dark paid off. As his work proliferated, Droll was asked to write songs for Noah Kahan, Joy Oladokun, Matoma, and others. Now, he’s focused on releasing a debut album of work done by and for himself.
“It's difficult for queer artists. There is this cold, callous approach to queerness in arts that it's like, there's no proof of concept for a mainstream audience, right?” Droll said. “Because everyone that is queer in music that is a big household name wasn't out at the time of their big push to pop culture or before they establish themselves within pop culture.” However, Droll has realized through his writing career and collaborations that “there is space for my stories, space for my words, space for my unique take and to not dull myself down and sprinkle little bits of myself in other people's work.”
“From writing with other people, I really figured out what is mine and what I have to offer — mostly, what I'm not willing to give away and have someone else say for me,” Droll said. “My jaded hot take is that I'm tired of co-opting my trauma to make other people more interesting.” Though Droll wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music growing up, his first job at Hot Topic introduced him to some favorites: Manchester Orchestra, The Killers, My Chemical Romance. (“I was a big Warped Tour kid,” he said.)
“I slammed myself into all of that passionate, intense, emotional music because I was deprived of it,” he said. “I was given the Ambien of music, and I'm like, these people have feelings, and they feel big.” Though he’s a bit quieter in his own approach, those big feelings remain. “If comparison is a thief of joy, call an ambulance,” he sings on the single “Nepo Baby,” a plaintive indie folk song making clear his lack of the titular status: “I wasn’t born on Bedford Drive to a prolific composer / My dad worked on the railroad / and my mom worked on herself.”
Droll’s uncanny self-awareness and slight winks to listeners — there are “a lot of early 2000s references” — come across in a combination that’s utterly honest and open.
“[The album is me] reconnecting with my sometimes-I-feel-lost music fam,” Droll said.
Droll’s debut album is about coming to terms with a number of things: who he is, where he is, where he’s been. Is music worth it, or should he go back to college (“I Don’t Wanna Scream” harkens back to that “I-can’t-quit-you” theme)? And what about living in Nashville? The city is one thing; Tennessee is another. His songs address the “struggle of wanting to exist where I want to exist, even if where I exist does not want me there: this feeling of owning my place, owning my role in it.”
He wants his exploration of identity to touch not so much the loud corners but the quiet ones, a representation of queerness he feels is far less expressed. “This next group of songs is like music that would have really hit me If I had heard this when I wasin high school, or if I had heard this when I was in early college: music from a queer artist that isn't just telling me to go out, be proud and, like, love is love,” Droll said. “That's just a string of cliches.”
He wants to bring “more nuance” and “a casual ease” to artistry surrounding his identity: “comfortability in owning your queerness without having to perform it.”
