Musicians Are Outraged At Country Star Chase Rice For Playing A Packed Concert Amid The Pandemic

On Saturday, Chase Rice, who has had No. 1 songs and albums on the US country charts in recent years, performed at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, a Petros, Tennessee event center that used to be a prison. That normally wouldn’t be big news, but of course, the show took place during the pandemic, without substantial social distancing measures being implemented.

Rice posted (and later deleted) a video of his audience, members of which were packed tightly together and not wearing face masks. Rice wrote in the post, “We back.” The venue told TMZ they took “numerous precautions” for the show, including reducing the allowed capacity from 10,000 people down to 4,000. They said fewer than 1,000 people were in attendance.

Regardless of the precautions taken, Rice’s peers in the community were not pleased with what happened in Tennessee over the weekend. Fellow country musician Kelsea Ballerini was upset, writing on Twitter, “Imagine being selfish enough to put thousands of people’s health at risk, not to mention the potential ripple effect, and play a NORMAL country concert right now. @ChaseRiceMusic, We all want (and need) to tour. We just care about our fans and their families enough to wait.”

Finneas also wrote of the news, “A year ago, imagine all these people being asked ‘are you willing to die to see Chase Rice.'”

https://twitter.com/finneas/status/1277515254180704257

Find some more reactions from others in the music world below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. .