Big Guy & The Very Large Men -- soft hands, hard times
Big Guy & The Very Large Men (a project of James Droll) revels in their unflinching gaze at our attempts to hide our struggles, writes Kate Fishman.
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When it comes to Big Guy & The Very Large Men, so much is in a name. Promising boy-to-boy tenderness as big as life, the project’s title beautifully introduces Nashville songwriter James Droll’s newest direction in the 2026 EP soft hands, hard times. Droll’s pop-country venture draws together smart storytelling and surrealist punchlines from queer living in the bible belt, featuring collaborators Fancy Hagood, Maddy Medley, and swim team. How he described his sound in 2019 rings true for Big Guy, too: “Smooth. Real. Ouch.”
We first meet this persona spotlit in the “COWBOY BOOTS” music video’s country bar, wearing a hat as big as him and a belt buckle somehow larger than that. While Big Guy croons over “your cowboy boots with the shined up leather, like they were made for walking all over me” two pairs jig across his chest. He gazes plaintively toward the camera from the ground, as though being the dance floor itself is no big deal.
These keenly observed ideas about self-respect thread soft hands, hard times—especially on “Only Sin,” its second single. After following a boyfriend to Nashville, Big Guy recalls, “Loving you was a secret, one that you were always better at keeping.” Being loved in silence is an inflection point: accepting a smaller image of yourself, the real sin.
Casual cool runs throughout, too, whether in “Junkyard Dog”’s devotion to a struggling partner or “NICOTINE BUZZ”’s slurry, ethereal vignettes from Droll’s religious upbringing on a llama farm. When the songwriter began city life in Ohio—an era during which he wrote a whole album about being in the closet, from the closet—he got screwed over by a former bandmate and had a stint working the third shift at Walmart. In “Skinny Bitch” he asks again and again, “Are you mad at me, Cincinnati?” a cheeky refrain for being kicked around, but handling it.
Droll is at his best when poking around the suffocating quiet that’s a telltale, enthralling symptom of homophobia and misogyny. “Can’t have blood, sweat, and tears if you never cry,” he sings on the titular “soft hands, hard times,” his favorite song he’s written. Medley’s luminous harmonies layer the compassionate send-up of toxic masculinity.
Throughout soft hands, hard times, there’s catharsis in how Big Guy never turns away—a refreshing break from the repression he chronicles. Droll’s crisp, witty lyrics search his past for good stories, and people’s faces for whatever they aren’t saying. His neighbor has the kind “wanted posters are for” in “What’s the deal, Lucille?” The song dances along the delicate line between caring for the people we live beside and recognizing when they’re really not doing great. “I’m not trying to put my nose in your business,” he sings, “but you don’t have a front door on your house.”
Who among us can say we haven’t been there, pretending our shit isn’t out in the open? Big Guy reminds us that for better or worse, it always is. We’ll be known.
soft hands, hard times will be out tomorrow, June 26. You can pre-save it or pre-order it right here. Nashvillians, Big Guy& The Very Large Men will celebrate the EP release that night, June 26, at American Legion Post 82. Click here to purchase tickets.
Big Guy and the Very Large Men – Instagram
