Skid Row bassist Rachel Bolan has appeared on Coffee Talk With Adika Live where he was asked if residents of his home town of Nashville, Tennessee have been taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously.

“Finally, yeah,” he replied. “They weren’t. There was no mandated safety anywhere. I still think things are a little too lax here, but you finally have to wear masks when you go into stores. And the restaurants have paper menus, limited seating.

“We went to a restaurant for the first time since this all happened about two and a half weeks ago,” he continued. “And it was really bizarre. We had to wait outside because there were 10 people already in there, and we went in with our masks. The menus were paper that got thrown out after we used them. The waiter had a mask and gloves on. And it felt safe. It was weird, but it felt safe. And so far, so good.

“My girlfriend’s a nurse; she’s a hospice nurse,” Bolan added. “She has to go into facilities that have COVID wings and stuff like that. So for anybody who thinks that this isn’t real, it’s real. And we get the real numbers just about a few times a day through the American Nurses Association. And it’s a real thing. And it’s real scary.”

Speaking how the touring industry may be forever changed following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Skid Row rocker said: “It’s not gonna be a quick fix by any means. Because that’s our business — you play in front of a bunch of people that are yelling and exhaling with force and whatever. And you meet people and you hang out with people and you come in contact with a lot of people — not just the band; all the people there. And there’s no quick fix to it.

“All of our shows this year got pushed to 2021,” he added. “And now our China shows, which were supposed to be in March of this year, and got pushed to March 2021, have been pushed to March of 2022. So I don’t know which direction that’s gonna go.

“We all need to really take it serious and take part of it,” Rachel reiterated. “I’m probably gonna hear so much shit for this, but this is not a political move — this is a real thing — and it’s freakin’ scary and needs to be taken seriously.

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“I posted a picture of my mask, my N95, and some guy just put an emoji of a sheep up there. And I was just, like, ‘Nah.’ I’m not sheep. I’m not doing it for any other reason than to protect myself and to protect the people around me. ‘Cause it’s scary, man — it’s a scary thing — and it can be dealt with, from everything I’ve read. And I don’t mean just Googling someone — not the Internet School Of Medicine. I mean the real numbers that we get here.

“We’ve just gotta follow the rules for a little while. I remember people freaking out when they had to wear seatbelts. But everyone got over it. And it probably saved their lives more than once.

“To go into a Shoprite or a Kroger with a mask on for 25 minutes isn’t gonna kill you, but not doing it might.”

The US COVID-19 death toll currently stands at 138,000.

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