The Day That Reignited Berkshire County Songwriter Rees Shad’s Inspiration
On January 6, 2021, Great Barrington-based singer-songwriter Rees Shad was inspired to write the song “Call It Done.” Although the tune sounds like a love song, its true genesis came from that day’s dark events.
Shad, who is also a luthier, found himself struggling to construct a guitar due to wood that wouldn’t bend to his will. He turned on the radio as a distraction, and what he heard was a live feed from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. “Toward the end of his life, my dad worked under Reagan and Bush [Sr.], but my family could always find common ground and talk it through,” he said. “The difference that I heard on the radio that day … was a nation that would not come together, on one of its worst days,” said Shad, with emotion in his voice. “I sat down at the piano and started writing.”
With the lyrics “Ours was a grand affair, but it didn't turn out as planned/for better or for worse, we’ve always stayed together/never ever came undone, despite the doubts of everyone,” “Call It Done” at first appears to be about a relationship in trouble. “As a writer I’m sometimes too political, so I learned to use more metaphors,” Shad said. “This is a song about the union we’ve created; I’m not willing to give up on it and walk away.”
Shad said he wrote the song in about 45 minutes, and he and his band, Rees Shad and the Conversations, will be playing it live this month to “commemorate where we’ve come from and what we can be.”
After more than a decade at the helm of a successful recording studio, followed by two decades as a professor of higher education, Shad recently returned to his first love: full-time songwriting. The Conversations, a jazz-pop trio made up of drummer Bobby Kay, bassist Jeff Link and Shad on guitar, are currently on a regional tour to promote Shad’s most recent album, “Tattletale,” which debuted this past October. (The trio will be at Methuselah Bar & Lounge in Pittsfield on Jan. 21 and Bright Ideas Brewery in North Adams on Jan. 27.)
Shad grew up in New York City, the child of two lawyers who were also big band and classical music lovers. After studying piano, he began writing and recording his own songs at a young age. Eventually, he switched from piano to guitar because “it was much easier to impress girls at parties with a guitar.”
He graduated from Skidmore with an English degree and got married; the couple bought an old farm in Argyle, New York, where they created their recording studio in the property’s barn. Shad, who now has a smaller recording space in the Great Barrington home in which the couple have lived for the past five years, recalled the farm as being “basically a bed and breakfast for musicians.”
After 14 years “on the farm,” Shad said he realized his favorite part of the entire venture was showing interns the ropes and witnessing their excitement and eagerness to learn. Shad, who holds master’s degrees in Technical Communication, Design & Technology, and as an Educational Specialist, switched gears and spent close to 20 years working in higher education. While a tenured associate professor at The City University of New York, he established its first program in Game Design.
Although he’s released 30 of his own albums, Shad said he’s currently writing some of the best songs of his career. “I’m composing all the time, another record is in the can for the future, and another album is already 90% composed,” he said. “I’ve never been this creative and I’ve never felt so free. I really love doing this.”
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