Zack Borer and Chayim Newman, who’d been within the music enterprise for years earlier than forming Amber Well being, an organization of therapists and clinicians, got here up with a easy thought: to offer psychological well being assist for struggling crew members on stadium and enviornment excursions — with the headliners paying for it out of their very own budgets.
However in 2021, when the pair landed a Zoom assembly with Marty Hom, Olivia Rodrigo’s tour director, Hom shot them down.
“That is by no means going to work,” Hom instructed them. “I’m not going to rent you, and no one else goes to rent you. What you’re going to cost is just too costly.”
Borer and Newman have been undeterred. Throughout the pandemic, the 2 had carried out a survey of 1,100 touring professionals and located that 34% suffered from melancholy, 70% had bother sleeping, 45% repeatedly consumed alcohol and 26% reported “severe suicidal ideation.” The end result was clear: crews wanted remedy on the street. So the clinicians reworked their funds and requested for 5 minutes with Hom, in particular person, months later on the headquarters of stay occasion manufacturing firm Rock Lititz in Pennsylvania.
After re-pitching Hom, the 40-year business vet — who has labored with Beyoncé, The Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand — lastly got here round. “All proper,” he responded. “Now I get it.”
This summer season, Rodrigo is considered one of 16 main artists — together with Ed Sheeran, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Green Day — who’ve paid Amber Well being to provide free mental health benefits to all of their crews. (The corporate labored on 4 excursions in 2024.)
“I by no means had something like that,” Daisy Spencer, a guitarist on Rodrigo’s Guts tour in 2024 and 2025, instructed Billboard. “I had this free useful resource of unbelievable therapists, and I utilized the crap out of that.”
Borer had determined to change into a therapist after years of making an attempt to make it as a New York artist and songwriter, bartending all evening whereas fighting nervousness and melancholy. After making the pivot, he attached with a colleague, live performance producer-turned-clinical psychologist Newman, to kind Amber Well being in 2020.
(L-R) Zack Borer and Chayim Newman
Juliana Bernstein/Alive Coverag
At first, Amber Well being held conventional classes with particular person shoppers, specializing in artists and the music business. By way of that, they discovered that artists and crew miss their households and buddies and are disconnected from their assist techniques whereas on the street for months; cope with difficult group dynamics, working at impersonal venues and dwelling on cramped tour buses with not-always-like-minded co-workers; and cope with accidents amid tough bodily work.
“We began to consider the size, and the way we might make a systemic affect, and assist hundreds and hundreds of individuals,” Newman says.
In 2021, a forklift crashed right into a Green Day photographer on the Philadelphia Phillies’ Residents Financial institution Park, breaking his pelvis, femur and again and lacerating an artery, almost killing him. He recovered, then sued Stay Nation, the Phillies and others, settling final 12 months for $18 million. Final August, Inexperienced Day returned to the stadium for the primary time for the reason that accident, which was “one thing all of us have been dreading,” in response to Zito, Inexperienced Day’s longtime manufacturing supervisor. Fortunately, Amber Well being was available to offer on-site classes. “It was actually good to know they have been there,” Zito provides.
Amber Well being obtained the same name throughout Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour in 2023, after a cameraperson fell off a nine-foot-tall scaffolding and suffered an harm so extreme that it traumatized fellow crew members. “How quickly are you able to be out right here?” Hom, the tour’s director, requested Newman and Borer. Inside a day, the pair met the tour in Chicago and endorsed a few of its 500 staff. “It was a really high-pressure, high-stress tour,” Hom says. “Individuals speak about being under-appreciated and never being taken care of on tour. This was a manner we might care for individuals.”
On a typical tour, Borer, Newman and different Amber Well being therapists are available at numerous dates, scheduling non-public, confidential hour-long classes all through non-travel days. For the Rodrigo tour, which travels with 120 crew members, Amber Well being gives a scientific group of 4 to 6 individuals, “taking into consideration age, demographics, race — culturally acceptable, so all people on the tour will really feel like there’s anyone on our scientific group they’ll go to,” in response to Borer. The corporate additionally gives a disaster helpline and digital classes, and sometimes meets with crew throughout pre-tour rehearsals. “We’ll sit down with the tour and map their entire routing,” Newman says. “We’ve acquired individuals touring out and in. Then it’s like, ‘OK, cool, see you quickly, ebook one thing nearly if you might want to subsequent week — in any other case, we’ll see you someplace in Minneapolis.”
Neither Amber Well being nor tour contacts would give particulars about prices, however Hom says the funds boil right down to excursions paying for particular person remedy classes, that are corresponding to conventional workplace visits. Excursions additionally cowl journey and lodging for the clinicians.
“It’s a decimal level in a giant tour’s funds, and one which reveals a whole lot of worth to the group,” Zito provides. “While you’re budgets which can be $20-$30-$50 million, and also you’re speaking $100,000 for one thing like this, is it value it? Ought to it convey worth for the group? I feel it does.”
The multibillion-dollar touring business — final 12 months, in response to Billboard Boxscore, the highest 100 excursions earned $15.7 billion — has till just lately principally ignored psychological well being companies. However for the reason that pandemic, along with Amber Well being, the Recording Academy’s health-focused charity MusiCares and firms equivalent to Denver-based nonprofit Backline Care and Athens, Ga.-based Nuci’s Area have provided similar services.
“There was a whole lot of stigma round psychological welfare earlier than. I don’t know if it’s as a result of it was a male-dominated atmosphere, or it’s simply, ‘The present should go on,’” says Helen Himmons, manufacturing supervisor for Sheeran, whose 150-person group began working with Amber Well being in early 2023. “COVID positively broke down a few of these limitations. Now, there’s an consciousness that in order for you the present to go on, you’ve acquired to assist the people who find themselves integral to creating that occur. For those who don’t take care of individuals, you’re going to finish up paying for it, a method or one other.”
Provides Shaun Clair, govt vp of enterprise growth for Clair International, which gives employees for live performance excursions and employs Amber Well being for a variety of excursions: “We all know at any second if we’re in disaster, now we have entry to world-class companies that enable us to deal with that disaster rapidly and appropriately.”
Pivotal to the success of Amber Well being, which supported 4,000 live performance staff in 2024 and just lately partnered with the Nation Music Awards, is Borer and Newman’s understanding that they have to work throughout the live performance enterprise system.
“We don’t stroll right into a tour and say, ‘Now we have to vary this,’” Borer says. “We perceive the business runs at this clip, at this degree, that creates magical moments and experiences. What we do is attempt to assist individuals when issues get onerous.”