Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Rees Shad

Earliest memory associated with music

Film music. I grew up in New York City with parents that were avid film goers. They brought my sister and I to the theater almost weekly, and the rating of the film was unimportant… probably not a great reflection on their parenting, but a major influence on my general aesthetic. It was the late 1960s and early 1970s and I was exposed to a wide swath of popular American films. But being a little kid, I got distracted from the actual film by the whirls of cigarette smoke in the projection beam, the architecture of the great old theaters, and members of the audience. So, I would end up paying more attention to the soundtrack than the footage. I came home and started sounding out the theme music from these films on the family piano. My parents noticed and got me a teacher.

I didn’t particularly like being told what to do, and was pretty inattentive to my teacher’s lesson plan, but she was a genius in her pedagogy. If I had done my homework and been practicing since the previous lesson she would reward me with transcribing music I would improvise for her, and then playing it back for me. She was a Julliard student, and (I think) needing to practice for her transcription class. So, the lesson would kill two birds with one stone: She got me practicing, and the reward was good practice for her.

Most importantly, it was how I started composing, and she was my very first tape deck. I fell in love with the art of sound reproduction through this experience of hearing my teacher play back for me the music I would create for her… It’s why I became a recording engineer and record producer.

The origin of my passion for creating music

Certainly, that teacher was important as an origin point, but I think the root of my creative urge was simply to communicate. Music was my first language. I hummed and sang all the time, and my parents always encouraged my singing. I was a strange little kid. Not into physical rough and tumble stuff and pretty lonely overall. I entertained myself with pretending to perform music for invisible audiences.

Add to this that I suffered from a pretty severe reading disability. I would actually sing words as I read them in order to better perceive their meaning.

Text made sense when it was sung. This fostered a certain kind of synesthesia where to this day, I read text, and in my head, I hear melody.

What’s ironic is that I have a great deal of trouble reading music!

The story behind my most recent music project

Do you mean my latest release or the current project I am working on?

I am a musical workhorse that is uncomfortable when standing still. I am continually creating something and I consider myself as much a designer as an artist. So I continually dream up musical design problems for myself… puzzles that need to be solved. Most every album I have released has had a conceptual catalyst, from working to repopulate Sherwood Anderson’s fictional town of Winesburg with modern day characters and situations (Anderson, Ohio – 1995), to telling the story of a serial killer on the Underground Railroad and the lasting trauma of his actions (The Watcher – 2020), or to a musical noir adaption of an Arthurian legend (The Galahad Blues – 2024).

So… if you are asking about the most recent release, Porcelain Angel, which came out this past March (2025)… This project involves a song cycle that brings me back to my Americana roots after having ventured into a number of other musical genres over the last 25 years. On this album I wanted to focus on songwriting as storytelling (not unusual for me in any genre), but with a more simple and streamlined production than in my other recent albums. Yeah, I bring in the band for a few songs, but the central vein of acoustic guitar and voice is primary. I reconnected with an audio engineer and producer I hadn’t worked with since the late 1990s, and we holed up in a small studio in North Western Massachusetts (about 2 hours from where I live), and we tracked almost all the music in three days… which is also unusual for me production-wise. I more often produce a record over several months with a slow cooker type of attitude; adding tracks here and there to refine the music until it resonates with me on orchestral levels that – quite honestly – is way too obsessive.

On Porcelain Angel we worked to capture performances and commit to their energy and directness as quickly as possible, and so while the album eventually was polished in the mixing stages, the performances have a bit of a raw edge to them…at least from my perspective, which honestly, is all I have to run on.

But if you are asking about the current project I am working on… I have been quite prolific this year. Writing and cowriting constantly. About a month ago, I came in off the road and walked into my home studio to start recording straightforward voice/instrument demos of all these songs and realized I had close to 30 songs that I thought should be considered for the next project. Half of those were created with the idea of writing an album that tipped a hat to all the composers and songwriters that have influenced me over the years. Songs that directly address other artists and let them know how they were important to me. Songs that were created in the style of other artists…lyrically or stylistically… as a nod of thanks. While others simply revisit subject matter brought to my attention by particular artists.

This has been fertile ground for me, but I’ve also created songs that I really like that don’t address that particular design assignment of tipping my hat to important influences. This forced a quandary about what the next album will be… and I know I will go into the studio in late winter and record something, but I don’t know what it will actually be yet.

I listened back to these sparse demos and kind of fell in love with the raw nature I found there. Taking away the reverb, and the ambience, and the lead solos (I do love to pick up an electric and let it sing), would be a very different way to present new material to an audience (2023’s Six Strings & A Story was a collection of solo acoustic guitar performances of songs from my catalog, but they reference full productions from earlier albums). I’m thinking I’d like to do an album of songs like Rick Rubin’s production of Johnny Cash’s solo recordings. Right in your face, honest and clean, with a focus on lyrics that forbids the listener from ignoring them. No kitchen sink production for this one…. we’ll see what happens between now and next Fall when I’ll unveil it.

OH! I am also working on a side project with Frank Viele. We got together one weekend and popped out seven songs we really like and recorded one of them in my home studio. It convinced us we have a cool chemistry, and we’re working to put together an album for release on his Bigger Beast label some time in 2026.

Describing my sound to someone who has never heard my music before…

Genre blending story songs that celebrate language as well as melody. A salad of blues, R&B, folk, Country, rock, and jazz… what Americana was supposed to mean back when John Grimson first started selling the idea to radio producers.

My songs aren’t usually very simple and they require a second and third listen in order for a listener to really clue in to what I’m putting across. These are songs about Americans living day to day while confronting universal truths and quandaries, which (I think) makes them understandable to a more global audience. I explore the human experience and I strive to do so as a wordsmith – crafting songs that aren’t afraid to have big words that a listener might occasionally need to look up.

Something that I have learned that completely changed the way I make music…

I used to obsess about the difference between the sound of my albums and the sound of my performance. I worried that I needed to make the live show sound like the record. I hated performing. It was debilitating. I ended up performing songs the same way night after night and feeling less and less connected to them. It almost became like a live band Rees Shad karaoke routine. And it was part of the reason that I walked away from performing for over 20 years.

What I learned was to accept the jazz mentality of improvisation as applicable to Americana music. I don’t mean something like jumping into jam band territory, but I recognized there is an opportunity to exercise the freedom to reinterpret a song in the moment and shape a performance that is singular. I don’t actually give a damn about what was before. I am focused on the moment I am making the song breath. Right now. Right here. And it is soooooo much more interesting and satisfying. It changed everything.

For the first time in my life, I look forward to stepping on stage and singing my songs.

The tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process…

The literal software… my imagination… combined with the original instrument… my body. I make music on whatever is at hand. Nothing is essential other than being conscious, physically able, and neurologically healthy. I am ever thankful for my brain being healthy, my hearing to be very good, and my voice and hands still being strong.

If the question is more about what other tools I use most often (note – they are not essential to me being able to do what I do) first and foremost is a lined moleskin notebook and two clean line ink pens (one black, one red) to write a song down with. I then use my iPhone to record whatever I come up with for reference. I have my great grandfather’s baby grand in my living room that plays me as much as I play it, and the same goes for my primary guitars (a Bob Gramann tulip cutaway and a Gibson Advanced Jumbo). These instruments are so wonderful that I get lost in playing them, which makes me more open to communicating with the muses.

I have a fully functioning ProTools recording studio in my attic with a sporty microphone and outboard collection that helps me get the music presentable, but again – if I lost it all…even (God forbid) my hands, I’d be standing on the corner singing my thoughts… that’s what is really essential.

Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?

I think it’s charming that people still use that term. Yeah, there are labels still putting out huge pop music stars, but if you think about it. The business has changed so dramatically, that we’re pretty much all indie… with the exception of the up and coming AI stars. Taylor Swift doesn’t work for anyone, so isn’t she independent?

I prefer thinking of established artists – like David Wilcox, Steve Earl, Brandi Carlisle, and Ben Folds, as opposed to the up-and-coming or uncommonly known artists out there keeping at it – like Rustin Kelly, Verlon Thompson, or Brandy Clark. But believe-you-me those established artists often are struggling in the trenches with the rest of us.

Who am I listening to these days that I think you have to know and like to be a friend of mine? Here’s a list for you (in no particular order and in addition to those named above):

Terry Kline

Adam Carroll

Barak Hill

Lance Cowan

Rustin Kelly

Meghan Cary

Kemp Harris

How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?

If you listen to the songs you’ll hear deeply personal experiences, fears, and expectations wrapped up in fictional stories and situations. I do not believe that a writer should just write about what they know. Whoever said that has incited dime store cracker jack writers to regurgitate the same crap time after time and should be shunned by humanity to live in a cave with a nasty badger for a roommate.

Writers should know about what they write. Dream up a situation and go and do the research to infuse the imagined with factual information to solidify the idea into something that is believable to the reader/listener. But that’s all just architecture. What fuses the connection with the audience is their recognition of emotional truth from a writer, and that is the mortar that holds the bricks together. Know about what you write and infuse that with emotions you know firsthand.

So I write songs about experiences I have never had in places and situations I have never been in that are fueled by my own experiences with loss, betrayal, abandonment, imposter syndrome, false hope, and intense grieving as well as the heights of emotional highs from successes in all sorts of forms… love, career, business, friendship. Believe me. I have ridden the rollercoaster and gone back and bought another ticket time and time again, but I don’t simply want to sit here writing songs about that ride.

By and large, I don’t write songs for the public about these things. Because they are too personal… not private mind you… personal. If I write a song about my singular experience for a general audience I’m failing before I start. I need to mine the universal from an experience and smelt that into framework for a story so that you will (hopefully, if I’ve done my job) identify with the character in the song or at the very least believe them and empathize with them.

That’s my mission.

So yeah, everything I have gone through is in my songs in one way or another, but not so as you could read my memoir and see the stories repeated there. The click clack of my emotional rollercoaster rides directly influences the prosody and cadence of my lyric and the intensity of my melody. But I stopped naval gazing for the most part years ago.

What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?

As I think I have already described, I want the listener to find empathy with the character in the song. This is especially important for the unrelatable character I might present… the one so different from you that you would never believe you have something in common with them, but by the end of the song you find some sort of connection. Because if I can get you to identify with someone or something you would consider “other,” perhaps you will be open to connecting and experiencing a wider social network with those you might have seen as too different and work to accept a wider world of experiences.

I spent close to 20 years as an educator, and the point of education (in my humble opinion) is to expand students’ awareness of the world around them and the way they can interact with it in order to prompt them to engage with it more deeply, and care about it enough to work to improve it.

Art helps people engage with the unfamiliar, making it become more familiar, while design allows for simpler interaction with the familiar. It’s why I consider myself an artist as well as a designer. I am trying to accomplish both goals in my song craft.

What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?

Change is unavoidable, so adaption is vital.

What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?

I don’t dream about things like that – not concrete places. I am striving for a career where I can consistently fill a theater with a couple hundred people who listen to and appreciate every note and word.

If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?

That is always evolving, but right now I would very much like to have Emmy Lou Harris sing a song with me … and have Bonnie Raitt on board as well. That would be a lovely night in the studio indeed!

Where can our listeners follow and support your music?

I am available on all streaming services, but if you want to support my work, pop over to my website at www.ReesShadMusic.com and see when I’m playing near you and come on out to a show. You can also purchase some CDs, Vinyl, USBs, or merch. Better still you could support me on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ReesShadMusic.

Lastly, if you are willing to put on a house party, I’ll come play for you. Today that is literally one of the only lucrative opportunities for up-and-coming musical artists to survive. It’s also a Hell of a lot of fun to host! My wife and I host musicians I meet out on the road when they are coming through our neck of the woods, and we have developed a wonderful community of fans for these musicians. It is highly recommended!

Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?

At this point, it’s all about making community. I have found rich and meaningful relationships through making music (with other creatives and fans around the world), and at the end of the day, that’s where I find reward. So I hope that continues.