It’s been nearly a decade since the infamous Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, yet country music star Jason Aldean continues to be haunted by the event eight years later.
At the time of the shooting, Aldean was performing at the Harvest Festival when a gunman opened fire on the crowd in attendance, killing 60 people and injuring over 800 others on October 1, 2017.
More recently, the 48-year-old Aldean has discussed his reaction to the shooting on an episode of the Armchair Expert podcast, specifically detailing how the event shaped his outlook on life for months afterwards.
“It was a festival like we’ve done a million times,” Aldean said on the podcast. “It was just obviously something that we weren’t prepared for.”
In the wake of the devastation brought up by the shooting, Aldean revealed the emotional reunion he shared with his family when he finally managed to return home.
“We finally got out of there the next afternoon, home and you’re just glad to be home, show up my mom’s crying,” the Grammy-nominated musician 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.”
After pouring on SNL following the shooting, Aldean then said he went to visit many of those injured during the event, an experience the singer called “tough” to emotionally deal with.
“Sunday morning, I was on a flight going back to Las Vegas to go to the hospital and see all the victims. That was tough,” the musician said. “People hadn’t recovered from their wounds yet.”
Once he finally managed to return home, Aldean said that all of his emotions finally caught up to him in regards to 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.”
“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,” the Night Train artist continued by saying.
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 1, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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