“That pisses me off.”
Last week, many in the country music world and at large grieved the losses of the 60 victims shot and killed at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada on it’s seventh anniversary on October 1st.
The Route 91 Harvest Festival famously featured headlining performances from Eric Church, Sam Hunt and finally Jason Aldean, who was performing on stage during the shooting, which lasted for 11 minutes and injured over 850 people.
Today, Aldean appeared on the podcast of the co-writers of his highly-controversial 2023 #1 hit, “Try That In a Small Town,” aptly named the Try That in a Small Town Podcast. During the epidode, the group discussed the Alabama-Georgia college football rivalry before opening up about the tragic night in Las Vegas.
Kurt Allison, co-writer of “Try That In a Small Town” and Aldean’s longtime guitarist, began talking about the long-running criticism that the band ran off of the stage without warning the audience while the gunman was firing, “I’ve heard people say how we ran off stage, but we literally had no idea what was going on.”
The “Fly Over States” singer, who has taken quite a beating online for the aforementioned crticism, quickly jumped in and said, “That pisses me off.”
He then said, “I hear that sh*t all of the time, and I just want to grab them by the throat and go, ‘Listen man, I’m being yelled at in my ears.’ I turn around; my secruity guard is waving. I’m like, ‘I have no idea what’s happening.’ I have no clue.”
Tully Kennedy, Aldean’s bassist, also noted how he thought that the stage was collapsing at first, “Just so people know, when something like that happens, my first thought [was] ‘Is the stage collapsing?’ But a shooter in a hotel does not even [process] in my brain.”
Kennedy and Aldean then went on to explain how much security for their shows have changed since that tragic night with the “You Make It Easy” singer noting how there is frequently SWAT teams securing the venues with large buildings surrounding it. “It’s changed,” said Kennedy.
Watch the clip here and the entire podcast on Spotify: