hi. this is phillips. i am phill. you are not. but i am. har har har, as uncle john fahey would say. (jawn, when he was blind joe death.) but anyway, he actually grew up near me. thirty years earlier, but near me. i grew up on the edge of the country and the stripmall. right after i dropped acid for the first time, the stripmall took over and the landscape changed. and the people seemed different, too. maybe not always in a good way. so i left. i might have vowed never to return. i had already been out to montana and lived with the blackfeet indians. i infiltrated their confederacy, as it were. so i went back to the reservation. but i was in vermont, too. in burlington on the streets, eating every day at the sally-ann at 5 o'clock with dempsy, who was a good bum and taught me a lot. i was also down in chester, vermont, on some land getting drunk with a poet who used a chainsaw with one hand. i was all over. foley beach, living with palm readers and surfers; playing the dock-workers bars at the end of the graveyard shift. it was fun. best bar fight i ever saw was in charleston, SC, between a frat gang and a sailor gang. a sailor got thrown out the window and a frat boy lost his eye. this happened during my solo on "me and bobby mcgee." i went to colorado, nashville, the west coast. got stranded in vegas and got arrested by navajos in gallup, NM. so i went over to england and built guitars for a while. i came back to new england and learned how to play clawhammer banjo. i lived in heath, MA in a cabin with no running water and an outhouse. i would watch coyotes migrating at night. i spend a lot of time in sand mountain, alabama, learing how to sing shape-notes out of 'the sacred harp.' then i moved to knoxville, where i sold guitars. then back up to vermont, where i worked construction and wrote. then i teamed up with a guy and we formed a band and hit the road and didn't really stop for four years. i didn't live anywhere for a while. we bought an ambulance at auction for $500 and i slept there. rented a room in portland, oregon. still working the road, i then moved to western canada. had a manager and a booking agent and records out and stuff. then that band fell apart. so i moved back to DC and started performing as "stripmall ballads." i just thought it was a proper descriptor for the kind of songs i wrote. wouldn't you agree?
SOME OF MY FAVORITE BANDS (of people who are still alive)
STRIPMALL BALLADS Ballads, Stripmall (ffp) 2009/10 Since Jimmy Died (ffp) 2009 Come On You Coward (unreleased) 2009 Hooked (unreleased) (ffp) 2008/9 13 Songs (out of print) 2008
SHIFTLESS ROUNDERS Toothpick in the Dash (unreleased) (g&g) 2010 Warm Clothing Line (growling and grumbling records) 2007 Places (g&g) 2005 Ghost in the Radio (g&g) 2004
CORA RECORDS Singles 1-4 (cold spring records) 2003-2004
PHILLIPS SAYLOR Stripmall Ballads 2002 Imperfect Wastes of Times 1998-2001 Songs From Wichita (yonder blue hill records) 1995
KING WILKIE Wilkie Family Singers Live - EP (2010)
BEGGARS TOMB (with Paul Lippens) Songs From a Mine Shaft (out of print) 2000
WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS SACRED HARP SINGING CONVENTION Co-Producer with Tim Eriksen, 2002
Stripmall Ballads is the latest musical manifestation of Phillips Saylor. A devout student of the American roots music tradition, Phillips got schooled on the road, spending his formative years playing shows to hobos under Maryland's rail road bridges, taking up claw hammer banjo and shape note singing in New England and breathing in harmony from the pews of Alabama and Georgia's Primitive Baptist churches. His professional work to date includes touring and collaborating with some of New folk's greatest acts, including Sarah Harmer, The Be Good Tanya's, Carolyn Mark, Baby Gramps, Jolie Holland and The Lonesome Brothers, picking and singing everywhere between East Tennessee and Edmonton. Phillips speaks his experience through a varied and dynamic catalog of songs on banjo and guitar.
After five years of fronting the critically acclaimed old-time revival duo, The Shiftless Rounders (featuring Ben Sidelinger), Phillips settled in the heart of the empire- Washington, D.C. and created Stripmall Ballads as a vehicle to focus on his original compositions and contextual performances. With a firm rooting in the traditional, Stripmall Ballads branches out into today's America, fusing virtuosic historical convention with contemporary lyricism. Reviving an old form of showmanship, an engaging form of showmanship, Stripmall Ballads draws out the audience, demanding attention for a new poetry.
Phillips is currently playing and recording his solo work in Stripmall Ballads, and touring with King Wilkie all over the USA.
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