The country music duo Big & Rich said Tuesday that seeing the suffering from the Las Vegas shooting was "literally like watching your own family."
"The country music fans and country artists like ourselves and country radio stations, it is a tight-knit group of people," guitarist John Rich told Brooke Baldwin on CNN. "We know a lot of the fans personally."
Big & Rich performed two hours before Stephen Paddock unleashed a hail of bullets on the 22,000 people at the Route 91 Harvest Festival from his room in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, ultimately killing 59 and injuring 527 others.
"We know their names and faces," Rich said. "We talk to them on social media a lot. We do a lot of the meet and greets.
"Fan interaction from the stage is a really big thing with our shows in country music.
"So to see these folks going through what they are going through, it is literally like watching your own family," he said.
"We know them. We know what their jobs are, we know where they come from."
Rich said fans had also come to the festival from California, Arizona, Tennessee — even Canada.
The group contrasted Sunday's rampage with the crowd singing "God Bless America" just an hour earlier, with bassist Big Kenny calling it a "celebration."
"That's one of the most unifying, most pure American moments you can possibly have," Rich added.
"If there was ever a stark transition or stark reality between good and evil, you witnessed it right there in those two events."
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