Snakes Alive! by the Dreadful Snakes, released on Rounder in 1983 (Rounder 0177), is the only album from a Nashville pick-up band that began as Béla Fleck’s informal outlet for straight bluegrass between road dates. The lineup was Fleck on banjo, Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Blaine Sprouse on fiddle, Roland White on mandolin, Mark Hembree on bass, and Pat Enright on rhythm guitar and lead vocals; Fleck and Douglas produced and Rich Adler engineered. The twelve tracks open with Enright’s “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?” and lean on hard-driving traditional material — “Sally Ann,” “Blue Yodel #4,” “Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die,” “Cash on the Barrelhead,” “Lonesome Whistle Blues” — alongside the instrumentals “Snakes Alive” and “Brown County Breakdown.” Within a year Enright and Hembree had co-founded the Nashville Bluegrass Band, which left this record as the group’s single document; it has remained one of the more respected Nashville bluegrass albums of its era.
Tracklist
- 1 Who’s That Knocking at my Door Source Recording 3:53
- 2 Snakes Alive 4:23
- 3 Travelin’ Down This Lonesome Road alt version 3:32
- 4 Story Of The Pharisees 2:12
- 5 Brown County Breakdown alt version 4:10
- 6 Linda Lou 3:42
- 7 Sally Ann Source Recording 3:01
- 8 Blue Yodel #4 alt version 2:39
- 9 Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die alt version 3:28
- 10 Cash on the Barrelhead alt version 3:33
- 11 Lonesome Whistle Blues 3:58
- 12 In Despair Source Recording 2:12
