Shaun Cassidy, the 66-year-old former teen idol who left performing decades ago to work behind the camera, is mounting his first major tour in 45 years — and said he had to relearn songs he wrote and take guitar lessons to prepare.
Cassidy told People magazine that he “literally had to take guitar lessons” because he had not played in so long, and that he has been brushing up on his catalog as he prepares to play a 50-city run called "The Road to Us Tour," which opens Sept. 13 at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. He said he is playing bass on the tour rather than guitar and that the set will span his career with classic hits, new music and personal storytelling.
"I had to relearn songs I had written. I didn't know how to play them," Cassidy said. Because he has not sung many of the songs in roughly 40 years, the singer said they feel fresh. "Because I haven't been singing them for 40 years, they're not dead to me. They feel new, and I'm only singing the songs I really liked back then that feel appropriate to me singing now," he told the magazine. "I can sing better than I sang when I was 20 because I haven't been singing. I think I didn't burn my voice out for 40 years."
The setlist will include Cassidy’s 1977 cover of "Da Doo Ron Ron," which became his first major hit, topped the Billboard Hot 100 and helped earn him a Grammy nomination for best new artist. Cassidy said the single was not his choice to launch the record: "I liked the song. It was my idea to record it," he said, "but that wasn't the song I wanted to be the first single off my album. I didn't get a vote, and I guess they were right. It went to No. 1."
Cassidy rose to fame in the late 1970s as both a pop star and an actor, starring as Joe Hardy in the ABC series The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries. He is the son of Oscar-winning actress Shirley Jones and the late Tony Award-winning actor Jack Cassidy, and the half brother of the late David Cassidy. By the mid-1990s, he shifted almost entirely to work behind the scenes in television, creating and producing series including American Gothic, Roar and New Amsterdam.
Reflecting on his atypical career arc, Cassidy said, "It's a weird résumé. I don't know anybody else that plays the Houston Astrodome for 55,000 people, says, 'Goodnight and see you soon,' and then doesn't show up again for 40 years, but that's kind of what I did." He described himself as an introvert who never enjoyed the limelight, telling People, "I’ve never enjoyed being a public figure. I don’t like all the attention. I'm basically an introvert. I don't really like being famous."
Cassidy said his reluctance to tour for decades stemmed from not wanting to try to recreate a younger self onstage. Audience response convinced him otherwise. "For years, I was like, I don't want to [tour] because I’ll just be trying to replicate some version of myself at 20, which I always thought would be embarrassing and why try?" he said. "But I discovered, and the audience told me this, that I didn't need to do that because I had actually all these other cards I could play. Now I'm a storyteller."
The Road to Us Tour is the longest Cassidy has undertaken. He said he will perform songs he enjoyed at the time and those he finds appropriate now, blending nostalgia with new material and anecdotes from his decades in entertainment. The tour announcement marks a rare return to the stage for a performer who spent more than half his life working as a television writer and producer, and underscores a renewed willingness to share the arc of his career with live audiences.
Tickets and additional dates for the 50-city tour were announced with the tour reveal; Cassidy did not provide a full setlist to People, but the inclusion of his signature hits alongside recent work and stories is intended to illustrate the throughline of his varied career.