Live music starts to return to some El Paso venues; county judge worries about virus spread

EL PASO, Texas -- After months of health mandates limiting El Pasoans from congregating, now live music is playing in some restaurants.

Koteiba Azzam, a businessman who owns Gasoline Ray's Dive Bar on Crossroads Drive, believes the city is ready and he is glad to bring back band performances for his patrons.

"After this 10 months, everybody had been struggling, frustrated.  I'm happy to see them back," Azzam told ABC-7.

But El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego is not happy. "Absolutely not!" he says about restaurants again acting as music venues.

Samaniego believes there is still more danger to come from the pandemic.

"We have finally become a very prudent community that is beginning to understand crisis and understood how many people that have died where we have a virus that is mutating," the judge explained. "Where we got a situation that could be very critical for us to even begin to move in that direction would be completely disingenuous to our community."