Photo by Gary Dorsey
Josh Abbott Band
I was on vacation in Austin, Texas on the November 2015 night when 89 people were killed in an attack at Paris’ Bataclan during an Eagles of Death Metal concert. My wife and I were getting ready to go out for dinner, drinks and a concert that night, but when news of the attack came out, our plans seemed weirdly trivial in light of the tragedy. I wasn’t sure how to feel about hearing live music on a night when dozens of people were killed just because they happened to be at that specific show at that specific time—something they were likely looking forward to for weeks or months beforehand.
When we got to the Mohawk to see HEALTH that night, things felt off. The atmosphere felt unusually reserved, and some light rumblings of the Paris terror attacks were overheard from people around us at the venue. But once the band started playing on the outdoor stage during a cold Texas night, something of a psychological realignment occurred. Whether it was a result of the intangible healing power of music or the comfort of being among people like us—eager to feel a moment of admittedly fleeting celebration—things felt right again.
On Sunday night in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history (to date) occurred at a country music festival headlined by Jason Aldean, once again bringing terror into a space where people go for an escape. And coincidentally, I was also at a music venue when it happened, basking in a moment of joy while making new friends and reuniting with old ones. I woke up the next day up to the horrific news, immediately feeling a knot in my stomach as I heard it reported on public radio.
Fifty-nine people (at the time this went to press) are dead as a result of a lone shooter, with more than 500 injured. It’s hard to make sense of such scenes of unspeakable violence. There are the feelings of grief and sorrow for those who have been tragically murdered, but there is also anger and frustration toward the powerful gun lobby and the failure of U.S. leadership to do anything about it. But I also feel frustration that this massacre—much like the Bataclan attacks and the Manchester/Ariana Grande bombing earlier this year—happened while people were watching live music. Though the motives and the methods of the attackers were different, the end result was the same: a violation of something that’s meant to offer people respite from stress or pain.
When something like this happens, it hits particularly close to home. I spend many of my nights watching live music, which makes those venues almost literally like a second home to me. They’re sacred spaces, places where people go to experience a form of catharsis or celebration, joy or escape. Music can be a form of therapy, and to go hear an artist play music is essentially to join a community of people sharing in something that might seem trivial on the surface but can ultimately be powerful and profound. At the very least, it’s a way to feel good and make a connection with others. When someone enters that space only to do harm to others, it feels particularly bleak—as if the one thing we count on to get us through times like these is no longer safe.
The morning after the Las Vegas shooting, Caleb Keeter—a guitarist for the Josh Abbott Band, who also played at the festival where the shooting took place—shared a statement about how the Vegas attack changed his mind about gun control.
“I’ve been a proponent for the 2nd amendment my entire life,” he said in a message shared on Twitter. “Until the events of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was.”
I applaud Keeter’s mea culpa, and the candor in acknowledging that he was stubborn about his support of looser gun laws until he saw the consequences firsthand. But there’s something else that Keeter said that resonated with me, which he tweeted after sharing that statement: “That being said, I’ll not live in fear of anyone. We will regroup, we’ll come back and we’ll rock your fucking faces off. Bet on it.” I admire Keeter’s resolve. The lives lost in the shooting can’t be brought back, but to let fear get in the way of putting something positive back out into the world would be to give up entirely.
I’m not optimistic about the possibility of ending or at least decreasing gun violence (or other acts of violence for that matter) in the U.S., and the invasion of a space that means so much to so many is beyond awful. But ultimately, as bleak as it gets, I’m with Keeter: I can’t count on the world (and especially the U.S.) to become a less horrifying place anytime soon, but to give up on the things that bring us joy and make sense when nothing else does, is to abandon hope.