Chris Young Addresses Vegas Attack

Although Chris Young didn’t perform at the tragic Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, he was there, and addressed it for the first time in Fresno, Calif., during his set at the local fair Oct. 4.

Rick Diamond / Getty Images for Tree Town Music Festival – Chris Young
Chris Young interacts with the fans at the Tree Town Music Festival at Heritage Park in Forest City, Iowa, May 28.

“After everything that’s happened this week i’m just so happy to see all of you tonight,” Young told an ecstatic crowd at The Big Fresno Fair after opening with an emotional cover of Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High On That Mountain.”

Young has been on tour with Jason Aldean, whose Oct. 1 set at Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas was cut short with a gunman opened fire from a hotel window and killed at least 59 people and wounded some 500 more.

Young tweeted during the event, “Spent I don’t know how long on the floor of a trailer behind the stage … know multiple people are dead. Listening to that gunfire…”

He added, “I am still shaking” and the single haunting tweet, “Why.”

Just before the show tonight (Oct. 4), Young tweeted a video with him saying that he hoped music could heal.

“Hey guys, I’m sitting in my bus, I know i haven’t really said a lot other than what i said on twitter about the night that everything happened in vegas. People lost their lives, people were injured. And I’m so heartbroken over that. My thoughts are with those families and everyone that had to go through that. That should never have happened at a concert,” he tweeted.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Vegas was the scariest night of my life, but hopefully music can help heal… <a href=”https://t.co/pYouNPSOpA”>pic.twitter.com/pYouNPSOpA</a></p>— ChrisYoungMusic (@ChrisYoungMusic) <a href=”https://twitter.com/ChrisYoungMusic/status/915757264568410112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>October 5, 2017</a></blockquote>

“I’m a musician, and music can heal. So i’m hoping that this is a night of trying to do that for a lot of people. Thank you to all first responders, firefighters and police officers and people who were helping others that they didn’t even know. Thank you and i love you all very much.”

Young’s manager, Larry Fitzgerald of the Fitzgerald-Hartley Company based in Nashville, declined to comment for this story, saying from the Big Fresno Fair that he and his artists would not discuss what happened in Las Vegas.

Young did not perform at Route 91 but was there with Aldean. Aldean’s weekend shows were canceled but the rest of the tour is still on, starting back up Oct. 12 at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla.

The Big Fresno Fair’s musical lineup this year also includes Chicago, Granger Smith, Brian Wilson, and Gabriel Iglesias.