Jason Aldean described the anguish he felt over the tragic shooting that took place at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.
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The "Try That In A Small Town" singer was performing at the country music show when a gunman fired over 1,000 rounds of ammunition at the audience of 22,000. Over 800 people were injured and 60 fans were killed during the Oct. 1, 2017, event.
Aldean spoke candidly about the emotional toll the moment took on him in the months following the incident during a recent episode of Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast.
Jason Aldean Says the Moment Was Something "We Weren't Prepared For"
"It was a festival like we've done a million times," Aldean told Shepard. "It was just obviously something that we weren't prepared for."
Aldean said he headed home the next day and was glad to see his family.
"My mom's crying," described the singer. "You know, my oldest daughter was in school, freaking out, thinking that somebody was trying to shoot us. All the details were still kind of coming out."
Aldean Went on To Play Saturday Night Live
Still reeling from the tragedy, Aldean was unsure about what his next steps would be.
"I don't know if we're going to finish the tour," he explained. "We didn't really know what was going to happen yet."
The singer then received a call from his manager the Thursday after the event. He said he received a call from Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels asking if he would perform on the show.
"Obviously, Saturday Night Live is something I've always wanted to play," said Aldean. "That's like one of those things as an artist or actor. It's just an iconic show. And so I hated that it was like that. And so part of me was like, f***, I don't want to do it like that."
Aldean agreed to do the cold open with a catch: they had to do things his way. The show had to play whatever he wanted to play and not "writing s***" for him to say.
"And me and my publicist sat on the phone in a room in a hotel and wrote out what we were going to say," he shared. "They let me do it. And so I called my band, rallied everybody."
Aldean Then Returned to Vegas
After the show, Aldean went back to Vegas to visit the victims of the shooting. Then, one day at home, his emotions caught up with him.
"I think for me, you know, I kind of had a breakdown in my house one day," said Aldean. "It was after my son was born, and just all that heaviness of everything, just getting laid on you.
"I ended up having a moment at my house where I kind of broke down thinking about just all the people that I could have lost, all the people that we did lose as far as fans, but my inner circle of people and my wife was there eight months pregnant with my son and all these things."
Photo by Jason Kempin / Getty Images
