Meet Rees Shad

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rees Shad a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rees, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

My parent’s were both children of the Great Depression who valued hard work and dedication to a task. They also placed an awful lot of faith in higher education as being part of what made them successful. I don’t remember my Dad not working at something, and his work ethic especially rubbed off on me.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am an overall creative. I work in a lot of different mediums in order to express myself to the world. I’m probably best known as a songwriter and musical artist, but I see myself more as a storyteller.
I tell stories through song, through installation art, as an author, and as an educator. To me narrative is the quintessential medium of communication. Most of my successes as a recording artist have happened in the genre known as Americana or Modern Folk (although I have certainly ventured into Jazz, Blues, Rock, and even Electronica), but whatever the genre, I endeavor to to avoid the overtly didactic (telling other people what they should do or think), which a lot of songwriters seem to do in folk music especially. Instead I try to create narratives that give an audience empathy with someone they might not ordinarily connect with in order to move that listener closer to a worldview I hope that they will embrace. This was my primary pedagogy as a college professor for close to 20 years, and I embrace it as a recording artist today.
The work is subtle in nature, but I believe important.
I’m not overtly political, but what I do attempts to establish a means of communicating my opinions of the world without being confrontational. There is far too much confrontation in the world right now, and especially in our country. The albums I’ve been creating over recent years have an underlying mission of overcoming the bifurcation this country is experiencing socially and politically.
But rather than slam people over the head with my opinion , I am working to help them embrace characters in my stories that will lead them to a greater understanding of opposing view sets in order to encourage some meeting ground in the middle where we can once again embrace the idea of a civil society.
I don’t talk about Hotpoint issues in my songs.
I don’t place my characters in overtly political settings or narratives.
I truly believe that if I can make an audience member see the world through somebody else’s eyes I might be able to bring them a little closer to having empathy with people they don’t understand or know… I believe that it’s the only way we are gonna move forward productively as a global society.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

First and foremost, learning to write well early on was a very, very important skill set. I had the benefit of an amazing education where I learned to examine the world deliberately, analyze the views of others in order to develop my own point of view in an informed way, and communicate those views in an efficient and clear manner. There has not been a single opportunity that I have experienced in my life that did not come down to my having the ability to clearly and succinctly communicate my intentions.
Secondly, learning to listen to someone without formulating my response to that someone while they are talking has been an incredibly important skill. When people are truly feeling heard is when they are not only most comfortable, but most honestly themselves. When you are looking into another person’s eyes and really hearing what they have to say about something, you are at your most essential humanness. You too become more honestly yourself, and if you are adept at communication, there can be a true exchange of views.
I find that condition of true exchange is essential to getting through the B.S. and onto the real conversations that can happen. Such level of conversations leads to a real possibility for collaboration, which, in my experience is essential to getting stuff done. Yeah, not everyone sees eye to eye. Not all conversations get real, but this simple act of helping someone else be heard helps me realize rather quickly whether they are someone I can work with or someone I need to step around as I move forward in the world.
The ability to identify potential collaborators and subsequently work with them is the third most important skill set that I have learned. There are way too many people in the world struggling to understand what they actually want to do rather than figuring out what they need to do. I realized a long time ago that if I didn’t start hanging with people who were as motivated to do the same things I wanted to do as I was (or better yet, even more motivated and capable), I was treading water.
I have always worked to be an activator, but in order to do that, I have had to walk away from those who would waste time overly deliberating a direction. I’m not afraid to fail, because I recognize that failure is an essential part of an exponential learning curve…and that’s the only kind of curve I want to have in my life.

What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?

One of my favorite scenes in a film is that sequence from Moonstruck when the heroine’s father, a plumber, comes to give an estimate on a job to a wealthy couple in their Brooklyn apartment. He takes a pen from his pocket and taps it on a leaky faucet in a bathroom sink, and gravely announces that the problem is that the building has got copper pipes… all of which need to be replaced. The couple gasps as if they know what the hell he’s talking about, and the plumber says “going to be at least $10,000.”
I might be misremembering the specifics of this scene, but it is an excellent depiction of why a well-rounded education can inform you enough to avoid being taken to the cleaners.
When I work with specialists, I always try to inform myself in advance in order to be able to communicate with them, about what they do, in an intelligent way. I don’t need to know everything they do, but I need to know enough so that I can collaborate with them on an intellectually even playing field.
I know enough to know that copper piping is one of the most common systems of moving water through a building in our country. I also know that pex piping freezes and thaws without cracking and is very quick to install, so I want it in places that potentially might freeze in winter. I can work with either system of piping to Plumb my ownhome. So, when a plumber comes to my house, I can have an informed conversation with them about what they will do for me and how much time that ought to take so that I don’t get shafted.
My parents taught me to appreciate generalists very early on. My father adored my mother’s ability to speak intelligently on wide-ranging topics, from archaeology, to civil law, to literature, to Ornithology. All of my best friends are people who can discuss wide-ranging topics with me intelligently, and I feel that my liberal arts education was foundational to my ability to keep up with them. Without a doubt there are things that I am far more capable of doing … to date I have never been able to sit down at a drum set and be musical, and I certainly am not about to consult with other people on their medical issues, but I know how to research and inform myself, and I do so pretty often simply following my curiosities on a whim. I want to learn as much as I can, but at heart I am pretty easily bored by a single topic, so I keep exploring…

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Image Credits

Tim Gaudreau (all but last 2 provided), and Ed Rode (last 2 images)

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