On Oct. 1, 2017, country singer Jason Aldean was delivering his closing performance at the Route 91 Harvest music festival when an unspeakable tragedy occurred. Thirty-two floors above the Las Vegas Strip at the Mandalay Bay hotel, a 64-year-old gunman opened fire on the crowd below. Ultimately, 60 people lost their lives in what remains the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history. Each year on Oct. 1, Aldean has made sure to remember the victims. Today, eight years later, the “Try That in a Small Town” singer, 48, and wife Brittany sent love to their “Route 91 fam.”
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Taking to Instagram Stories Wednesday (Oct. 1), Jason Aldean shared a graphic of an orange ribbon with the Route 91 logo inscribed in the middle. “Thinking about all of our Route 91 fam today,” he wrote, along with three heart emojis colored orange, purple and black.
On her own Instagram Stories, Brittany Aldean shared a photo of the view from her hotel window a day after the shooting.
“”I can’t believe it’s been 8 years ago today since Route 91… We still think of and pray for all the victims and survivors every day. God bless our Route 91 family,” wrote the former NBA dancer, 37.
[RELATED: Documentary Explores Route 91 Harvest Festival Tragedy on Five-Year Anniversary]
Jason Aldean Opens Up on Route 91 Shooting
Onstage when gunfire erupted, Jason Aldean was physically unharmed. Brittany, then eight months pregnant with the couple’s son, Memphis, was backstage and also avoided injury.
During a recent appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard, the ACM’s Artist of the Decade spoke about his own experiences processing survivor’s guilt from the tragedy.
“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 recalled. He added, “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.”
Ultimately, Aldean says the horrific incident has “forever connected” him to Las Vegas. “At some point, you can either kind of run from it or accept it and, you know, try and make something good out of it,” he said. “And that’s kind of what we tried to do.”
Featured image by John Shearer/Getty Images for ACM
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