Remembering The Victims Of Route 91 Harvest Festival With Eric Church’s Gut-Wrenching Performance Of “Why Not Me”

It has been 8 years since the devastating attack on Route 91 Harvest Festival took the lives of 60 country music fans, and left hundreds more wounded on October 1, 2017. A 64-year-old man named Stephen Paddock, who we never really ever learned ANYTHING about, rained down over 1,000 rounds on the Las Vegas country music crowd from his 32nd-floor suites in the Mandalay Bay hotel.

Headliner Jason Aldean was on stage at the time, and his bass player later found a round stuck in his guitar, but Jake Owen was also performed there that day, Josh Abbott Band, Big & Rich and more.

I can remember waking up the morning after and feeling completely broken, sick inside, and still trying to process everything that had happened the night before I got on the subway in Chicago (where I lived at the time) to head to my office and everything felt completely silent. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like waking up in Las Vegas that morning.

A few days later, Eric Church, who headlined the festival on Friday, took the stage at the Grand Ole Opry and delivered the most powerful country music performance I have ever seen. One that still chokes me up every single time I watch it…

In honor of the late Sonny Melton, who was supposed to be at the Opry to see Eric Church on October 4th, but unfortunately passed away in Las Vegas, Church debuted the absolutely gut-wrenching “Why Not Me,” a tear-soaked tribute to the victims of this senseless act of violence.

One that we still don’t, and probably never will, have answers for…

Prior to performance, he delivered a gut-wrenching and emotional speech:

“I was the headliner and I looked out at the crowd, in that place, it was our last show of the year. I watched them hold American flags up during ‘How ‘Bout You’ I watched them put an American scarf around my neck during ‘Springsteen.’ They held records up hen I played ‘Record Year,’ they held boots up when I played ‘These Boots.’

I was so moved by it mainly because it was my crowd, I’ve seen this crowd all year, they’re mine… they came from all over the country because it was our last show. I did something different on the last song on ‘Springsteen’ I jumped down on the speaker and I went down actually and on the floor, which is it was a high stage, so I actually jumped out on the ground and it was a there’s a little row that split the crowd and it went all the way to my front of house guy.

So the crowd was on the right side and crowd was on the left side and I went down the right side now I shook everybody’s hand and I told them thank you for coming, it’s been a heck of a year, been a hell of a year actually. I went all the way down the right side waved at my sound guy came back up the left side… smiling faces, hands in the air, pictures being taken… and I jumped back up on stage and I played ‘Holdin’ My Own’ and ‘A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young.'”

And in the next 48 hours… everything changed:

“And 48 hours later those places that I stood was carnage… and those were my people, those were my fans. I didn’t want to be here tonight, and I didn’t want to play guitar, and I don’t want to walk on this stage but last night, let me try to get this out, last night somebody sent me a video of a lady named Heather Melton and she was talking to Anderson Cooper on CNN and she had on our Church Choir tour shirt. And he said ‘What brought you to Vegas?’ And she goes ‘We went there to see Eric Church because he was Sony’s,’ her husband who died, ‘It was his guy and we went there to see his guy.’ And and then she said we have tickets for the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night.

Over here, Section 3 Row F, there’s some empty seats and that’s their seat and I’ll tell you something the reason I’m here… the reason I’m here tonight is because of Heather Melton, her husband Sonny who died, and every person that was there because I’m gonna tell you something… I saw that crowd, I saw them with their hands in their air, I saw them with boots in the air and what I saw, that moment in time that was frozen, there’s no amount of bullets that can take away. None.

And that night something broke in me on Sunday night when that happened, and the only way I’ve ever fixed anything that’s been broken in me is with music so I wrote a song.”

For a long time, this was the first and only performance he ever made of the song. However, Eric Church performed “Why Not Me” for the second time on March 19, 2025, at the Grand Ole Opry’s 100th-anniversary special. The second performance was a powerful and emotional return to the same stage where he first debuted the song in 2017. 

Never forget.

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