As you may have noticed, country music is the rare genre that has sat out politics almost completely over the past two years. After the Las Vegas massacre in October, in which 58 people were shot and killed at a country music festival, there was increased pressure for mainstream Nashville stars to talk about gun rights. A few did. But most stayed quiet.
Given what happened with Eric Church over the past week, you can bet those silent singers feel justified. Church, an extremely popular country artist with a fiercely loyal fan base, shared his opinion about politics and the National Rifle Association. And it played out exactly the way you might have thought it would.
Rolling Stone published a Church profile as its cover story; the front of the magazine reads “Nashville's renegade Eric Church on loving Bernie, almost dying, and why he opposes the NRA.” Church's Instagram account urged fans to pick up a copy and read the interview, but cautioned not to “be misled by the headline.”
In the article, Church answered questions about President Donald Trump (and revealed he didn't vote in the 2016 election), Bernie Sanders, immigration, NFL protests and more. Then came the subject of the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas. Church headlined the festival two nights before the shooting, and still suffers from guilt that he was the reason some people attended the event.
“I felt like the bait: People come to see you play, then all of a sudden they die? That is not an emotion that I was prepared to deal with. It wrecked me in a lot of ways,” Church said.
The interviewer asked whether Church, a gun owner, had changed his mind on guns after the shooting. Church responded, “A
