Preserving The Wildlife

The Story behind the Songs Newsletter Series
June 20, 2004 Issue #21

Preserving the Wildlife – written by Kerry Chater & Austin Roberts

‘Preserving the Wildlife’ is the third track on the CD. I found this song when I was putting together an ‘album sampler’ of four songs in the late 90’s. The ‘sampler’, otherwise known as an EP, was a loose end that I wanted to tie up before leaving Nashville in 1997. I’d been in and out of Nashville for almost six years when I decided I’d waited patiently and quietly long enough learning how the music BUSINESS worked and I hadn’t done anything to be heard as a songwriter or artist.

So, to add some variety, credibility and allies to the project; I chose songs written by other songwriters that I really enjoyed and that were ‘FUN’. Now these songs were by no means considered main stream or really even Nashville material. But then again neither was the material that I was writing at that time. I just knew what I was enjoying at the time and what I like writing and singing about. At that time anything to do with ‘Bubba’ was all the rage in Nashville. I really couldn’t relate to the whole ‘Bubba’ thing. I was at a point in my life; early 20’s, where I was searching for adventure, love and inner guidance. I was dealing with loosing my closest friend, confidante; my whole family for that matter; my dad. So, since that’s where my head was that’s what I was writing about. Needless to say Nashville wasn’t interested.

The song ‘Preserving the Wildlife’ was pitched to me by Gary Sadker a producer at Red Ridge Entertainment who had got it from Sony Tree. Sony Tree was one of if not the largest publishing company in town at the time. I loved the song. We did however change the whole feel of the song and I wanted to change some lyrics so that I could fully relate to the song as an artist. In order to go changing the song like that we needed to get the okay from the writers. This was a perfect way to meet a man that I now proudly call a good friend, Mr. Kerry Chater. Type in Kerry Chater into any search engine and you’ll see some amazing songs he as written for some super big recording artist. When Kerry heard what we had done with the song he invited me around to write with him and his beautiful wife Lynn Gillespie-Chater. The whole project was worth the opportunity just to write and learn from these two professional writers. Though the project never yielded any record or publishing deals it afforded me the opportunity to make some of the best friends I’d ever meet.

Oh yeah, what’s the song about. The song is a clever play on being a politically correct and sensitive to nature. The twist is ‘Human’ Nature and it’s anything but politically correct. It’s a real good feel good let your hair down and be wild party song. Just what I needed.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the story behind the song. If you’d like other information you can check out the CD credits at www.jamesray.info/cdcredits.html