Jason Aldean revealed he suffered a “breakdown” months after the Las Vegas festival shooting in 2017.
“It was a festival like we’ve done a million times,” Aldean recalled on the “Armchair Expert” podcast. “It was just obviously something that we weren’t prepared for.”
Aldean was performing on Oct. 1, 2017 when shots rang out at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Sixty people died and more than 800 were injured after a man opened fire from the window of a Mandalay Bay casino hotel room.
“We finally got out of there the next afternoon, home, and you’re just glad to be home, show up my mom’s crying,” Aldean told host Dax Shepard. “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.”
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Aldean had a busy schedule in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. He opened “SNL” days later then traveled back to Vegas to honor the victims.
“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,” he shared. “People hadn’t recovered from their wounds yet.”
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Aldean’s wife gave birth to their first child together two months after the shooting, giving the country singer a moment to begin processing at home.
“All of a sudden at home, we kind of had something else to focus on versus watching that on the news every day,” Aldean recalled. “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.”
The “She’s Country” singer struggled thinking of what could have happened during the fatal shooting.
“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,” he said.
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Despite his survivor’s guilt, Aldean never attended therapy in the aftermath – choosing to rely on his family and friends instead.
“I guess [I’m] too Southern,” he told Shepard. “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 amongst each other.”
