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“Like Damson trees and honeybees, we are a dying breed,” Colby T. Helms sings in the video for ‘Higher Ground’, as the 21-year-old Appalachian phenomenon takes to the woods to deliver a timely sermon on getting away from it all and leading a simpler life.
If you ever feel like you’re doing something simply because it’s a habit, then just stop for a moment and imagine what it is you would actually like to be doing. It probably isn’t sitting on your phone watching people spinning their pets around.
Taken from his forthcoming debut album, Tales of Misfortune, ‘Higher Ground’ is a song for anyone who ever feels overwhelmed by the modern world. It's for anyone who’s had enough of the endless noise everywhere, are sick of technology trying to get our attention all the time and feel like abandoning it all on a daily basis to live a simpler life in a cabin in the woods.
"Higher Ground comes from a time in my life when I had to figure out what my priorities were", Helms explains. “Working yourself to death for a seemingly lost cause will drive you to insanity. We get caught up in the rat race and lose our heart and soul in the process”.
“Being with the people you love, in the place you love, doing what you love, is a good start to find that inner peace we all strive for. This song is for the folks who strive daily for that inner peace”.
The video for ‘Higher Ground’ is premiering exclusively on Holler below.
“I’m gonna live way up in the holler / I can’t stand the city no more”, he sings in his scratchy twang. “These lowdown days, these long highways keep me feeling alone / I wish was high and somewhat dry in my underground home”.
The “underground home” he sings about sits at the bottom of the Southwest Virginia foothills, half-a-mile from his nearest neighbour, where the singer resides in an “underground house” built by his late father, on land his family has owned for generations.
Colby T. Helms first dreamed of making music at age 12, when a group of Blue Ridge Mountain old-time and bluegrass players performed at his father’s funeral in Boones Mill, VA. To make his dream a reality, he taught himself guitar, banjo and mandolin by watching local performers and YouTube videos.
On the day he turned 16, he bought his first car, a stick-shift Jeep Wrangler, and hit the road to play anywhere people would have him, becoming a veteran performer in the Blue Ridge Appalachian Mountains region by age 18.
Set for release in January, Helms penned all the songs on the semi-autobiographical concept album as a senior in high school. Produced by Helms’ mentor and Boones Mill, VA-fiddle-legend Billy Hurt, the 8-track collection recounts his origin story and artistic coming of age.
Colby T. Helms opens for Marty Stuart at the Annapolis Songwriters Festival on September 16th, while making his Americanafest debut in Nashville next week.
His debut album, Tales Of Misfortune, is released on January 19th on Photo Finish Records.
