Stripmall Ballads is the haunted, dust-blown project of Phillips Saylor Wisor, a songwriter wandering the backroads between myth and memory. Drawing comparisons to Neil Young, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Maybelle Carter, his work lives in the tension between Appalachian tradition and modern disillusion-ment—aching with spectral beauty, dry wit, and a bone-deep sense of longing. From early lo-fi master-works like Since Jimmy Died to the sparse, cinematic ache of Distant, his songs are slow-burning dispatch-es from the heart of a fractured America—where ghosts speak in minor chords and resistance sounds like a hymn. Stripmall Ballads doesn’t just sing about forgotten places—it sings from them.
Phillips Saylor Wisor – aka STRIPMALL BALLADS – is a Maryland-based rollicking musical rambler, rife with story-songs rich in emotion and hardihood. His brand of folk music sings the heartbreaking ballads of old brick buildings, vacant lots, and rustbelt towns. Of third shift papas, flood plains, and long drives through nowhere towns. He’s boots on the ground, guitar across the body, ever observing the ugly mundane mixed with the beautiful chaos of this place we trample upon on the daily.
He’s shared stages with Tommy Prine, John R. Miller, Danny Barnes, Les Claypool, The Be Good Tanyas, Willy Tea Taylor, just to name a few.
In his early days, Wisor found comfort in DC’s encampments searching for validation in the gritty corners of tucked away spaces. Where street people applauded and encouraged as he picked away, a rustling sound of Americana and folk, with boozed-up night chatter for background noise.
As founding member of The Shiftless Rounders, Phillips dove deep into the Appalachian ocean of old time banjo and balladry. And as a fervent practitioner of Shape Note music, he has spent countless hours singing in the “old way” and devouring the harmonic notions of American roots music.
With a nod to Woody Guthrie, Phillips deploys all these influences in his music. Stripmall Ballads is a testament to the enduring power of painting experience with emotion, forever a voice of the strange amongst strangers.
