ABOUT COLBY

Every town has them. 

The underdogs. The people who never quite fit in. The ones who are misunderstood. The ones who strive, stumble, and keep going anyway.

With his second album, One for the Losers, Colby T. Helms tells their stories.

Raised in the Blue Ridge foothills of Southwest Virginia, Helms launched his career as a teenager, writing raw and ragged songs that drew from the people, places, stories, and struggles that shaped him. If his debut album chronicled his own experience, then One for the Losers widens the frame by looking outward. Across a dozen tracks, Helms shines a light on the overlooked and misunderstood characters who've crossed his path, from troubled friends and fallen mentors to moonshiners, immigrants, and working-class Virginians trying to survive in a world that threatens to leave them behind.

"This is a record for people who don’t feel like they have a voice," he says, speaking with a southern drawl colored not only by his Appalachian roots, but by the years he's spent singing at folk festivals, fiddlers' conventions, campgrounds, and dive bars, too. "I wrote my first album while I was still in high school, then I spent a few years on the road, playing those songs every night. One for the Losers delves into what it's like to be a road musician, as well as the characters and challenges you encounter along the way — and some of the ones waiting for you back home, too."