Bobby Choy is a loser.

 

He reiterates this from an intimate stage at the El Cid theater on L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard, where he sits slouched on a wooden chair with his guitar (“a piece of sh*t,” he describes), his long black bangs eclipsing one eye.

 

“You guys can come closer,” he utters timidly to the scattered, chattering crowd. “I don’t stink.”

 

Wearing a faded zip-up sweatshirt, he warns that he could pass out at any moment as he’s in the final stretch of the 10-day no-solid-food Master Cleanse, partly because he can’t afford to eat. He remarks that some parts of his songs suck. His titles include “Girls Like You Don’t Go for Guys Like Me.”

 

You almost feel sorry for him.

 

Almost.

 

That is, until he starts singing. Then you discover what his devout army of fans have known all along. That Bobby Choy, an alt-folk singer/songwriter who goes by the moniker Big Phony, is talented. His voice, a soothing sound infused with Elliot Smith and Radiohead influences, whisks listeners into a mellow trance and teases them with unexpectedly witty lyrics.

 

And that whole loser thing? It’s precisely what makes him so cool.

 

Of course, the poor-guy spiel is no act. Choy, 30, left the corporate world to dive full force into his music, recently releasing his latest album, “Straight to Bootleg, Volume 01,” which was recorded in a friend’s home studio. (In one song, you can hear police sirens because the windows were left open.)

 

To promote the project, he divides his time between L.A. and New York, crashing on couches and aerobeds. “It really is a struggle, but somehow I’m making it month to month,” he says in an interview at the KoreAm office. “Somehow, when I don’t think I’m going to make this month’s bills on my own, it always works out. I’ll sell just enough CDs or I’ll get in a last-minute show.”

 

For Choy, music has always served as an intangible safety net. Growing up in New York City, times were rough. When his father’s apparel business went bankrupt, his family of five moved around 20 to 30 times. The lack of stability was shattering for Choy, a shy kid who already felt overshadowed by his two older brothers.

 

One day, his mom bought one of his brothers a guitar. “He made it clear to me that I couldn’t touch it, and if I did, he would pretty much break my face,” Choy recalls. “My way of responding to that was by playing in secret when he wasn’t home. I finally got better than he did, and Mom noticed, so she took the guitar away from him and gave it to me.”

 

The guitar soon became his source of comfort as he grew “tired of making friends.” He  started learning gospel songs (his mother was a pastor) and then moved on to mimicking the tunes on whichever cassette tapes were in the house.