Stripmall Ballads – Everybody Wins

Stripmall Ballads – Everybody Wins
LE 100
HWF Exclusive high beam blue

THIS ITEM IS A PRE-ORDER & WILL SHIP IN FEBRUARY 2026, ALL ITEMS PURCHASED WITH THIS PRE-ORDER WILL SHIP IN FEBRUARY 2026.

With Everybody Wins, Phillips Saylor Wisor—better known as Stripmall Ballads—delivers a stark, sweeping, and fiercely lyrical portrait of forgotten America. Set against landscapes of crumbling mill towns, floodplains, boxcars, satellite parking lots, and the haunted quiet of early morning light, the album is both elegy and exaltation for the outcast and overlooked. Wisor’s storytelling is unflinching: every line is freighted with memory, grit, and heartache. This time, he’s joined by alt-country hero John R. Miller and his band The Engine Lights, whose intuitive, road-worn musicianship anchors the record’s emotional heft. Special guests Lydia Loveless, Willy Tea Taylor, and Bob Sumner contribute harmony, depth, and a shared sense of restless spirit, rounding out an album that feels timeless, timely, and deeply human.
 
Everybody Wins is a dispatch from the margins, a collection of dusty stripmall psalms and roadside laments that burn with quiet revelation. From the bruised beauty of “Rabbits” to the biting cultural commentary of “Like and Share,” Wisor writes with an unmatched sensitivity to the everyday holy and the quietly broken. His voice is both lived-in and luminous, carrying the weight of hard years and flickering hope. This isn’t just an album—it’s an altar of song for the ghosts still walking Main Street. One listen and you’ll understand: these aren’t just stories. They’re survival songs.
Guitar, vocals and songs: Phillips Saylor Wisor.
With Kentucky John Clay, J. Tom Hnatow and John R. Miller. Featuring Chloe Edmonstone, Lydia Loveless, Bob Sumner, Willy Tea Taylor.
Recorded at Small Blue Studio in Lexington, KY
Produced/Engineered/Mixed by J. Tom Hnatow
Cover photography by Brett Schenning / Photo illustration by Ryan Rich