‘Please go by the laws’

LOS ANGELES statement released on his social media accounts, country singer Chase Rice offered no apologies or clear regrets about a weekend concert that stirred outrage for its packed, no-social-distancing, mask-free crowd conditions.

But he acknowledged that “a lot of people seeing that online had a big problem” with the appearance of the show, and he urged fans at his next concert to “please go by the rules ... please go by the laws.”

Unlike his standing-room general-admission show in Tennessee Saturday, Rice’s next show is at a drive-in, as most of the bare handful of live concerts by name artists happening in recent weeks have been. “The biggest thing for all of us is the safer we are now, the quicker that we get to get to actual normal live shows, which I know we all want,” Rice said.

There was no driving in Saturday for his show at the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, where the audience looked downright Coachellalike in its shoulder-to-shoulder closeness and enthusiasm — at least as captured in video footage by Rice himself, which he posted to Instagram with the caption “We back.”

Although the venue said the crowd was smaller than it appeared, at only about 1,000 ticketholders, the festival-like look of the footage, at a time when coronavirus rates in that state and others are spiking, made Rice an instant social media target as his footage was passed along as a symbol of obliviousness to the still spreading disease.

But some fans defended Rice — and another country singer, Chris Janson, who was attacked for similar footage of a packed show in Idaho the same night — as someone being unfairly railroaded in a public overreaction to the coronavirus crisis.

Perhaps in deference to those fans, Rice offered no indications Saturday’s show was unwise in anything other than appearance, and that, along with his seemingly putting the onus of safety at his next show on fan behaviour, may do little to mollify his critics.

“I have a show in Ashland, Kentucky on Friday, and it’s a drive-in show,” he said near the end of his message. “You can take your trucks, take your cars, you have your own space. You can get out of your cars, you can get out of your trucks and party with me. Please do — sing the songs — but stay in your own space; stay with the people you came with. And the biggest thing for all of us is the safer we are now, the quicker that we get to get to actual normal live shows, which I know we all want. So thank you guys for understanding. Please go by the rules.”

Chase Rice