Following the devastating Las Vegas massacre at Route 91 Festival, headliner Eric Church has broken his silence, releasing a song for victims of the tragedy titled “Why Not Me.”
Jason Aldean was performing when shots rang out, but two days prior country music star Eric Church was on that same stage, experiencing an entirely different moment. When he looked out into the crowd, he saw the fans having fun — having the time of their lives.
“And 48 hours later those places that I stood was carnage. Those were my people. Those were my fans. I didn’t want to be here tonight. I didn’t want to play guitar. I didn’t want to walk on this stage,” Church prefaces his performance at the legendary Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN.
What he said next is incredibly heartbreaking:
“Last night somebody sent me a video of a lady named Heather Melton. And she was talked to Anderson Cooper on CNN and she had our Church Choir tour shirt. And he said, ‘What brought you to Vegas?’ And she goes ‘We went there to see Eric Church. Cause he was Sonny’s — her husband who died — it was his guy. And we went there to see his guy.’ And then she said ‘We have tickets for the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night.'”
“I am going to tell you something… the reason I am here tonight is because of Heather Melton and her husband Sonny, who died. And every person that was there. Because let me tell you something, I saw that crowd. I saw them with their hands in the air. I saw them with boots in the air. What I saw, that moment in time that was frozen, there’s no amount of bullets can take away. None.”
Watch the touching moment below…