Snake Farm--It Just Sounds Nasty

Snake Farm--Well it pretty much is.

If you grew up in San Antonio, you spent a lot of your childhood going north on I-35 out of town. This is because this is how you get to New Braunfels, the Guadalupe River, and Austin. And this means you spent a lot of time driving past the Snake Farm outside of New Braunfels.

I went the Snake Farm once, in high school with some friends, and we all agreed that was one time too many.



And this summer Texas singer/songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard put out an album called Snake Farm. And the lead track shares the album's name. So I asked to get this album for Christmas, and my brother-in-law Jake came through.

The first thing that popped into my mind was, "The Snake Farm has been an institution since 1967 and it took almost 40 years for someone to write a song about it? That's surprising."

Many of Ray Wylie Hubbard's song have a blues quality to them, which means these songs often get stuck in your head. The song Snake Farm is one of these songs. But the beauty is, in this case, I am not annoyed by having his songs in my head. Rather, I just want to listen to his songs more and more.

Click here for the lyrics.

So I played this song this morning at 7 a.m. as I was eating my breakfast and have been hearing the song in my head ever since.

I also like the end of the song ("And we... you know...it's a snake farm"). Ray Wylie Hubbard is very funny.

The final thing about this song is it is a pretty accurate description of the vibe and mood of the Snake Farm. I just wish Ray Wylie Hubbard had written that song back in 1989. Then I could have just listened to his song to know what the Snake Farm was like. Instead I went and checked it out for myself and just felt kind of dirty and very depressed for about three days afterwards.