Shaggy plays the Coach House Nov. 13
Coming off a three-week tour of Europe with Sly and Robbie, performing in front of audiences of over 2000 reggae fans, Shaggy will start a stateside tour beginning with The Coach House on Nov. 13.
“It’s almost as if I forgot what fun touring was all about! We haven’t been to some of these places in the neighborhood of 11 maybe 12 years. It’s been awhile,” laughed Orville Richard Burrell, best known by his stage name, Shaggy.
“I am sure I’ve played Orange County but it’s been many, many moons back.”
With the new classic reggae album, “Out of Many, One Music”, produced by Sly and Robbie, Shaggy realized the best way to promote it was to take to the road.
“Obviously you don’t have a lot of reggae radio outlets besides your two hours on any major station on Sundays,” Shaggy explained. “So we’ve gone back to basically getting into the marketplace and playing shows and promoting this record.”
However, with the numerous hits and well-known songs in Shaggy’s catalogue, they will probably only play a couple of the new tracks live. They are well aware that the fans that come to see them will want to hear the earlier songs.
“We got too many big records that people know,” Shaggy said. “We have to do the catalog. We’re talking big songs like ‘Oh Carolina,’ ‘Boombastic,’ ‘Luv Me, Luv Me,’ ‘It Wasn’t Me,’ ‘Angel,’ these are massive, massive records and you have to do these records.”
Shaggy just finished a European tour with Sly and Robbie
Many of Shaggy’s songs include samples of other artists such as the single “Angel” from the 6x Platinum album, “Hot Shot.” It included two song samples – Merrilee Rush’s 1968 hit “Angel of the Morning” and The Steve Miller Band’s 1973 hit “The Joker.”
“My producer is Sting International. We have a musical marriage and a very musical relationship. And he’s a DJ,” Shaggy revealed.
“He’s a collector of records so he’s the one who normally comes up with all these crazy, crazy samples. He’ll give me a file of like 20 or 30 samples and when I listen to them, whatever I catch melody on I’ll go, ‘Oh I have an idea for this.’ Once I write the idea, he just puts the bells and whistles around it. It becomes something magical.”
The stage name, “Shaggy” originally referenced his shaggy hair, like a shaggy dog, and he claims it was never a sexy name.
“Until I did ‘Oh Carolina’ which blew up in England, ironically, I found out that ‘shag’ in England meant something else. Then all of a sudden it became a sexy name,” he laughed.
“So, ‘He’s shaggy, why do they call you shaggy? Is that because you’re a good shagger?” And I’m like, ‘uh, yeah, I was good at it!”
Although Sly and Robbie will not be joining him on this leg of the tour, he has the whole crew including Rayvon and Jimmy Coziet.
“I’m looking forward to seeing everybody in Orange County,” Shaggy said. “I’m psyched about going out there. I’m psyched about rockin’ it. I’m psyched about people coming to see us. It’s been awhile.”