Jason Aldean opened up about breakdown months after seeing Las Vegas shooting

Jason Aldean has opened up about experiencing an emotional collapse several months after witnessing the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

The country star had only just started his set at the Route 91 Harvest festival in October 2017 when a gunman began firing into the audience from the 32nd floor of a nearby hotel.

Aldean and his band were able to leave the stage without injury, but 60 people lost their lives, and more than 800 were hurt.

In a conversation on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast on Monday, Jason shared that he did not face the “horrible ordeal” right away because he had agreed to perform on Saturday Night Live the weekend following the tragedy.

“Obviously, Saturday Night Live is something I’ve always wanted to play. It’s like one of those things as an artist. It’s an iconic show,” he said. “I hated that it was like that. Part of me was like, ‘F**k, I don’t wanna do it like that.’ And we were shell-shocked too.”

Jason explained that he only began processing the devastating shooting after his wife, Brittany Aldean, gave birth to their son, Memphis, in December 2017.

“I think for me, you know, I kind of had a breakdown in my house one day,” the 48-year-old recalled. “It was after my son was born and just all that heaviness of everything, just getting laid on you... For our little family, our little crew, we got so lucky, not one injury to any of our guys. And you’re happy about that, but then there’s like this guilt-ridden thing. It sucks.”

When co-host Dax asked whether he had gone to therapy, the Big Green Tractor singer admitted he had not.

“I guess (I’m) too Southern,” he said with a laugh. “Here’s the ironic thing. We funded a significant amount of therapy for all the crews and everyone else. My therapy was me, my wife, my band, all of us who were kind of there. We all talked about it amongst each other.”

Jason also reflected that the tragedy has left him permanently tied to Las Vegas.

“At some point, you can either kind of run from it or accept it and try and make something good out of it,” the Georgia native said. “And that’s kind of what we tried to do.”