Nearly eight years after the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting, Jason Aldean opens up about the “breakdown” he experienced following the devastating event.
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During his recent appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard, the country music crooner spoke about how the music festival started like an ordinary event.
“It was a festival like we’ve done a million times,” he said. “It was just obviously something that we weren’t prepared for.”
The shooting, which occurred on Oct. 1, 2017, when a man opened fire through a window at the Mandalay Bay casino hotel room. Aldean was on stage performing at the same time and ducked into a nearby trailer to dodge the bullets.
A total of 60 people were killed, and more than 800 others were injured.
Aldean further recalled what happened after the mass shooting. “We finally got out of there the next afternoon, home, and you’re just glad to be home, show up my mom’s crying,” he said. “You know, my oldest daughter was in school, freaking out, thinking that somebody was trying to shoot us, so all the details were still kind of coming out.”
Not giving him much time to register the event, Aldean continued with his busy schedule. He appeared on SNL days following the shooting, and then he met with some of the victims.
“Sunday morning, I was on a flight going back to Las Vegas to go to the hospital and see all the victims,” he recalled. “That was tough. People hadn’t recovered from their wounds yet.”
Jason Aldean Was Finally Able to Process the Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting Months Later
Two months after the shooting, Jason and his second wife, Brittany, welcomed their first child together. Being home with the newborn allowed him the time to process the shooting.
“All of a sudden, at home, we kind of had something else to focus on versus watching that on the news every day,” he said. “I think for me, you know, I kind of had a breakdown in my house one day. It was after my son was born and just all that heaviness of everything, just getting laid on you.”
Aldean further reflected on the breakdown he had. “I ended up having a moment 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.”
However, the country singer admitted that he never went to therapy following the shooting. He instead relied on family and friends to help him cope mentally.
“I guess [I’m] too Southern,” he explained about his decision not to go to therapy. “Here’s the ironic thing. We funded a ton of therapy for all the crews and everybody else. My therapy was me, my wife, my band, all of us that were kind of there. We all talked about it amongest each other.”