Joseph LlanesIn the wake of the tragic Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting, Caylee Hammack is finding comfort in Maren Morris‘ song “Dear Hate.”
Three people were killed, not including the gunman, and at least 12 others injured after the shooting, which took place on the final day of the annual festival in Gilroy, CA on Sunday. Caylee had performed earlier that day, but left the site before the shooting began.
In an emotional Instagram post, Caylee shares that the weight of the tragedy has been weighing heavily on her mind, as she thinks of the lives lost — including six-year-old Stephen Romero — and the many who were injured. She says that hearing Maren’s “Dear Hate,” a duet with Vince Gill, “stopped me in my tracks” when it came on her playlist, inspiring her to cover the song in light of the tragedy.
With just an acoustic guitar and her voice, Caylee delivers an emotive rendition of the song, singing “Dear hate/Well, you sure are colorblind/Your kiss is the cruelest kind/You could poison any mind/Just look at mine/Don’t know how this world keeps spinning ’round and ’round.”
“Love so much that hate can’t get in,” Caylee writes in the caption. “Sending my love to Gilroy.”
Maren released “Dear Hate” after the mass shooting at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas. She co-wrote the song in 2015 with Tom Douglas and David Hodges in the wake of the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
She donated proceeds from the CMA-nominated song to the Music City Cares Fund, which was created to aid the victims of the Las Vegas shooting.
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