Colby T Helms is a 21-year-old country musician from Franklin County, who says a family tragedy first made him realize his love for old-time music.
“I grew up singing. And then my dad got cancer when I was 11 and he died when I was 12,” Helms recalled. “A bluegrass band came to the funeral, he loved that kind of music. So they came and played ‘Standing on a Rock’ by the Ozark Mountain Dare Devils, and they played ‘A Beautiful Life,’ which is a traditional gospel bluegrass tune. And that really set me off. I had an epiphany that’s what I wanted to do. I kept it secret for a long time, but I started taking guitar lessons.”
As a high school freshman, he won his school’s talent show. “And that’s when I was like, ok, maybe I do have a little something going here. And I just kept going ever since.”
Helms just released his debut album, “Tales of Misfortune.”
“At the time that I wrote all the songs that are on the album, I was extremely depressed, I had a lot of self-hate for myself,” Helms said. “And now that it’s out I’m getting so much good feedback, and so that’s been really great for me. Now looking back on those beginning days of learning how to play guitar and sing.”
One of the songs on the album is called "Daddy's Pocket Knife,” which was inspired after Helms found his father’s pocketknife, a couple of years after he passed away. “I thought it was lost forever. And the emotions hit me really hard. I just grabbed a piece of paper, and a pen, and just started writing it down. And I wrote the song in about 25 minutes.”
An engineer, Helms’ father built a unique underground home in Franklin County, designed to be energy efficient. Helms and his mother live in that home today.
Helms said the house looks similar to a hobbit hole. “The front part of the house sticks out of the hill. And then our roof is made out of grass.”
One drawback to the house is it doesn’t have good wifi. Still, he’s managed to gain a following on TikTok, which allowed him to connect with fans all over the world. But he admits he resisted putting much energy into it, until his record manager urged him to.
“I always hated TikTok. Always resented it because of the trend it created where people only have such a short attention span,” Helms said. “You have two seconds to catch the watcher’s attention. And there’s so many talented musicians and artisans out there that get overlooked because of this trend where nobody actually takes the time to dig into something or pay attention or actually really educate themselves about something. You have to fit a whole lot into a small video. So I always disliked that aspect of TikTok. But I was like, alright, I’m gonna try it.”
His videos have been viewed and liked by thousands of listeners from around the world. In them, he shares not just his story, but also what drew him to learn music that’s been played in southwest Virginia for hundreds of years.
“Appalachian music is a vital part of American music,” Helms said. “I think that now some of these people in other regions are starting to apply it to their own songwriting.”
Helms added that he thinks there are artists trying to push for deeper, more meaningful songwriting within the country music genre. “My hope is that in the next years, there will be a resurgence of soulful music, of music that means something. Not just depending on how many records it sells, how many times it’s spun on the radio, and how many movies it appears in. That’s something Appalachian artists are working towards right now, and I think it’s starting to show, for sure.”
