Country Music Star Eric Church Plays Song Dedicated To Vegas Victims: Watch Emotional Video

Eric Church headlined the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas on Friday (Sept. 29), & missed the tragedy that would befall the participants in that same event just 2 days later.

So moved by the horrible massacre, he planned to cancel his performance at the Grand Ole Opry on Wednesday, Oct.4, but something incredible moved him back to the grand old music hall.

Standing on stage, he spoke glowingly about the fans that came to Las Vegas for the show, & the energy he felt from the crowd. He went out to greet many of his listeners during the show, but little did he know then, that carnage would follow on the same ground he met with his people.

Billboard reports, He reminisced on the lively Harvest Festival crowd, with fans holding up boots when he played “These Boots," American flags during “How ‘Bout You,” and records during “Record Year.”

Eric said,

I was so moved by it, mainly because I looked at them and went, This is my crowd. I’ve seen this crowd all year. They’re mine.

Church said that he didn’t want to play at the Grand Ole Opry, but then he watched an interview with a widow of one of his fans.

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. She had gone to Las Vegas to see Eric Church “because he was Sonny’s [her husband, who died protecting Melton from bullets]... he was his guy.”

When she said they had tickets to Church’s show at the Grand Ole Opry, he changed his mind about cancelling the show.

In his most emotionally charged moment, he cried,

The reason I’m here tonight is because of Heather Melton. What I saw, that moment in time that was frozen, there’s no bullets that can take it away.

He wrote a song about the shooting called “Why Not Me,” a dirge mourning the victims from the Route 91 Harvest Festival.

Church said something we can all feel in our souls,

That night, something broke in me when that happened. And the only way I’ve ever fixed anything that’s been broken in me is with music.

Watch his performance of “Why Not Me” below: