Country singer Chase Rice held an 800-person concert in Tennessee and it appears few people wore masks or social distanced at the event

• Country Singer Chase Rice performed at a prison-turned-museum and concert venue called Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee, about 150 miles from Nashville, on Saturday night.
• Videos from the concert showed people standing shoulder-to-shoulder and singing, with very few masks in sight.
• A spokesperson for Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary told Insider that a less 1,000 people were in attendance at the concert.
• He said guests had their temperatures checked before entering, and the venue allowed space for social distancing, but some people ignored the guidelines, especially near the stage.
• Temperature checks have proven to be an unreliable measure of whether a person has coronavirus.

Country singer Chase Rice held a huge concert in Tennessee on Saturday night, and videos shared by the musician showed little social distancing and few people wearing masks.

Rice, who hit the top of the country charts in 2019 with "Eyes On You," performed at a prison-turned-museum and concert venue called Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, about 150 miles from Nashville.

Some news reports said that up to 4,000 people were in attendance at the concert, but Brian May, a spokesperson for the event space, told Insider that 954 tickets had been sold, and 809 were scanned at the venue Saturday night.

"All local requirements were abided by for the recent concert, and numerous precautions were taken. We drastically reduced our maximum venue capacity of 10,000 to 4,000 maximum capacity (lower than the state's advisement of 50%) with less than 1,000 in attendance Saturday night, providing ample space in the outdoor lawn area for fans to spread out to their own comfort level," May said. "All guests were given temperature checks prior to entering the venue and free hand sanitizer was provided to everyone at entry. All vendors and staff were advised to wear masks and gloves when interacting with guests, and bandanas were available for purchase on-site."

However, May said, some people in the crowd were not interested in following social distancing guidelines, despite "signage posted across the property."

Videos shared on Rice's Instagram story Saturday night showed concert guests standing shoulder-to-shoulder and singing while few people wore masks.

—Ricky Valero (@rickyvalero_) June 28, 2020

—Ricky Valero (@rickyvalero_) June 28, 2020

Rice's show happened a day after Tennessee recorded 1,410 COVID-19 cases, the state's highest single-day increase of new coronavirus cases, according to The Tennessean.

Rice spoke out about COVID-19 on Facebook in March after several concerts were canceled, saying that he was choosing "not [to] live scared, especially of something I can't really control."

He also released a song about the coronavirus, called "Dear Corona," which argues fans "don't give a damn" about the pandemic.

The lyrics read: "Dear corona, you don't know the heart of a country fan / You don't know that we don't give a damn / So you can reschedule Stagecoach / But you gotta understand / That you don't know the heart of a country fan."

People online criticized the concert on social media, including fellow country singer Kelsea Ballerini.

"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," she wrote on Twitter. "@ChaseRiceMusic, We all want (and need) to tour. We just care about our fans and their families enough to wait."

Rice wasn't the only country star to have a big concert over the weekend — musician Chris Janson also shared footage of a show on Saturday night. A source who was at the Idaho show told Variety that around 2,800 people attended the show.

—whitney pastorek (@whittlz) June 28, 2020

Brushy Mountain Group, meanwhile, is evaluating protocols and postponements for future shows it has booked with Kip Moore, Jamey Johnson, and Sawyer Brown.

"We are reevaluating the series from the top to bottom — from implementing further safety measures, to adding stanchions, to converting the space to drive-in style concerts, to postponing shows," May said.