Jason Aldean Reveals What Helped Him Heal After Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting

Jason Aldean is opening up about his recovery after the Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting in Las Vegas two years ago. Aldean just returned to Las Vegas for his first full headlining show since the tragic event, which occurred while Aldean was on stage. While he has been to therapy to help with the aftermath, the “We Back” singer says that going through it with his wife, Brittany Aldean, and his band and crew is what helped him heal the most.

“The best thing for me was the fact that my wife was there, went through it, my band was there, went through it, my crew, everybody,” Aldean revealed on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “So we kind of leaned on each other for that stuff, talked through it. Nobody kept it bottled up. If you had a breakdown, you had it in front of everybody, and everybody knew what was going on.

“My wife, we could talk, and she understood what was going on, because she was there,” he added. “I think that probably helped more than anything. We’re on the other side, and we’re part of the Route 91 family now. It’s a cool group.”

Aldean returned to Las Vegas one week after the shooting to visit with some of those wounded in the hospital, but he wasn’t ready to perform a full show, until now.

“It’s obviously something that I wouldn’t wish on anybody,” the Georgia native noted. “I think for us, going back to Vegas was something that I think we wanted to do it the right way. We didn’t want to go in and try to do it too soon. We felt like there was going to be a lot of people at our show that probably haven’t been to one of our shows, maybe haven’t been to a concert at all since that show, and if they were going to come back out, and that was part of the healing process for them, we wanted to make it a safer environment, something that made them feel safe.

“So we did Park MGM, 5000 seat arena,” he continued. “The other one was outside, 30 to 40 thousand people, whatever it was. This was a little smaller, more intimate, where people could come, hopefully feel a little more at ease and hopefully help them. We had to get on stage the next week and start trying to get through all of that.”

Aldean’s Las Vegas shows were healing for him too, which he shared in an emotional video on social media, of one of the survivors of the shooting being held high in his wheelchair while Aldean sang “Any Ol’ Barstool,” the song he was singing when the shooting began.

“This might have been the coolest thing I have ever seen,” Aldean wrote. “Thank you Las Vegas and our Route 91 family for showing us the love this weekend.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Terry Wyatt