Vegas country stars set to pay tribute
Special Grammy performance to honour victims of live music violence
NASHVILLE Three performers at last year’s Route 91 Harvest Festival, where a gunman opened fire on fans, will perform a tribute at this year’s Grammy Awards to honour victims killed at live music events this past year.
Eric Church, Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne, who performed at the three-day country festival prior to the mass shooting last October, will collaborate on a special performance at the 60th annual Grammy Awards, airing live on City/CBS from New York on Jan. 28.
The shooting in Las Vegas was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. modern history. It came in a year when 22 people were killed in a bombing outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in May.
Church headlined the first night of the festival, which was the last night of his tour. A gunman perched in a window of a hotelcasino overlooking the outdoor festival opened fire on the crowd during the final night of the festival as Jason Aldean was performing, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more.
“In all honesty, there’s not a day that goes by since that day that I have not thought of it and thought of the people and the victims,” Church said. “That being our last show of the year, I took it in differently than I have maybe taken in other shows. I savoured it. I remember everything about it.”
Church, who wrote a song called Why Not Me immediately after the shooting, said he knew some of the victims because they were members of his tight-knit fan club and said he appreciates that the Grammy producers wanted to reserve time in the show to remember those music fans who had been lost.
“Mass shootings, they happen every year, unfortunately,” Church said. “But this year was a little bit unique in that you had two happen at music events and one of those was the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. It’s been a tragic year.”
Ken Ehrlich, executive producer of the Grammys, said the country artists will perform a classic Grammy-winning song, which hasn’t been announced. “We considered a number of songs. We wanted something that is universal. We wanted something that spoke to the subject, which certainly this song does,” he said. “When you listen to the lyric, this one certainly stood out.”