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Stagbriar – “The Flu” ft. Cayla Fralick (Video)
Published: June 27, 2020

Stagbriar are a longtime beloved duo in the Columbia music scene consisting of siblings Emily and Alex McCollum. The band took a four year hiatus from the stage while Alex performed and recorded with fellow Columbia mainstay ET Anderson, and Emily finished up her studies in college. That all changed in the fall of 2018, when they announced their return to the stage and played their first gig in four years at Columbia’s if ART Gallery, opening for OHMME.

They continued to perform throughout the rest of 2018 and all of 2019, sharing the stage with big names like John Moreland, Justin Townes Earle, Waxahatchee (who infamously walked out on their bar tab at The Royal American), and many local bands.

From there, Stagbriar started writing and recording again, and spent some time fine-tuning their sound and deciding what direction to take. Before the release of their newest single “The Flu”, which features fellow Columbia artist Cayla Fralick, the band had not released an album since 2013’s Quasi Hymns, Murder-Ballads, and Tales of How the Hero Died, and had not released any music at all since the inclusion of their song “Parker O” on the 2015 Scene SC Sampler.

“The Flu” was released on Monday, June 22nd, along with the official announcement of their new album Suppose You Grow, which will be released on August 21st via Comfort Monk, the podcast and arts collective started by Columbia artists and Dear Blanca members Dylan Dickerson and Eddie Newman. The album will be released on vinyl and is available for pre-order here.

The single, while it is coincidentally called “The Flu”, was actually recorded a few months before COVID-19 took hold in the U.S.A. The video for “The Flu, though was released yesterday, and was filmed back in April, in the midst of the pandemic, and thus brings the social distancing aspect of 2020 into the mix. This song and video have a calming element to them that will hopefully bring an element of relaxation and clarity to your life during this time.

Watch the video for “The Flu” by Stagbriar below.