#49 Amber Health | Touring Mental Health Support for Crews, Artists, and Live Event Teams

There’s a version of touring the public sees—lights down, crowd up, the perfect moment when everything clicks. And then there’s the version the crew lives: long days, high stakes, tight timelines, and a whole lot of pressure packed into a moving target.

Recorded live from Rock Lititz in Lititz, Pennsylvania, this episode of The Giggs Podcast features Dr. Chayim Newman and Zack Borer, the co-founders of Amber Health, the music industry’s only full-service mental health and wellness provider. Together, they’re building something the touring world has needed for a long time: mental health support designed for the realities of live events—support that actually fits the road.

If you’ve ever felt the weird contradiction of being surrounded by people while still feeling isolated… or watched leadership quietly absorb everyone else’s stress because there’s “no space” for it on show day… this one hits home.

Highlights — What You’ll Learn

• Why touring can create high mental strain, even for people who love the job

• The “translation gap” between traditional therapy and touring life

• How proactive support helps crews handle stress before it turns into conflict

• What crisis intervention looks like in an industry that can’t hit pause

• Why the industry is shifting toward making support a standard, not a perk

• How healthier touring cultures can improve retention and reduce risk

“We don’t want the only option to be: if it gets bad enough, you just have to leave.”

The Touring Reality Nobody Needs Explained (But Outsiders Do)

One of the biggest themes in this conversation is simple: touring is different.

It’s not a normal work environment to throw people into close quarters with strangers, run intense days back-to-back, and expect everyone to show up sharp—physically and emotionally—without real recovery time. Add the usual stressors (sleep disruption, pressure, distance from family, constant transitions), and it’s not hard to see why mental health challenges can stack up fast.

What makes this especially tricky is that people outside the industry often don’t get it. Even when they mean well, the advice can feel disconnected from reality. You can’t “just sleep more” when your schedule is dictated by load-in, doors, show, and the next travel day. You can’t “just reduce stress” when the gig is literally built on high performance under pressure.

That gap—between what touring is and what outsiders assume it is—is exactly where specialized support becomes valuable.

Why Industry-Fluent Care Changes Everything

Amber Health’s approach is built around a core truth: trust is everything.

When someone is struggling on the road, the last thing they want to do is spend half the session explaining basic touring context. The language, the incentives, the hierarchy, the camp dynamics—those details matter. The people providing support need to understand the environment and how it impacts decisions, relationships, and behavior.

This isn’t about making therapy trendy. It’s about making it usable.

And when support is tailored to the touring world, it doesn’t just feel better—it can work faster because you’re not starting from zero.

Proactive vs. Reactive Support: Both Matter on a Tour

A practical framework that comes through clearly is the difference between proactive and reactive care.

On the proactive side, the focus is helping people manage the internal strain of the road:

• Ongoing support options

• Preventative wellness initiatives

• Training that prepares teams for the reality they’re stepping into

In a touring context, proactive care is about sustainability. Not “fixing” people—supporting them so they can keep doing what they love without slowly falling apart.

Reactive: crisis intervention when the road gets heavy

Then there’s reactive support: the moments nobody wants, but every tour eventually encounters. Crisis can look like a lot of things in live events. And when it happens, the problem isn’t just the incident—it’s that most people are not equipped to respond, especially while still trying to keep the show moving.

That’s where crisis intervention and ongoing support matter. Not as an add-on. As a stabilizer that protects the humans and the operation.

The Hidden Role: “De Facto Therapist” on Tour

If you’ve toured for any amount of time, you’ve seen it: there’s usually one or two people who become the emotional catch basin. Tour managers. Department heads. Production leadership. The steady hands who get pulled aside because someone’s struggling, angry, spiraling, or just done.

They’re not trained for it. It’s not in the job description. And they still have to do their actual job.

That’s part of the reason mental health support isn’t just a personal benefit—it’s a leadership pressure release valve. When there’s a credible, trusted resource available, it takes weight off the people who’ve been carrying it quietly for years.

From “Nice-to-Have” to a Line Item

One of the most important shifts discussed is cultural: the touring industry is moving from debating whether support belongs on the road… to working out how to budget it.

That’s real progress.

It signals a change in mindset: care isn’t a perk for “soft” days. It’s part of building a tour people can survive—and want to come back to. And as it becomes more common, it becomes permissive. The more people see it working, the more acceptable it becomes to use it.

Over time, that changes the culture from the inside out.

Why This Matters for Retention in Live Event Production

Touring is a choice. Especially for freelancers.

When crew members can choose between a tour that burns people out and a tour that supports people as humans, the decision starts shifting. Pay matters, sure—but so do leadership, communication, and the vibe of the camp. The industry is waking up to the fact that people don’t just leave tours—they leave environments.

A healthier touring culture isn’t just “good.” It’s competitive.

Closing: Build a Touring Industry People Can Stay In

The road will always be intense. That’s part of the deal. But “intense” doesn’t have to mean unsupported.

This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at what it means to take mental wellness seriously in touring and live events—and how Amber Health is helping the industry build a new standard of care that meets people where they actually are: backstage, on the bus, on the move.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE: Spotify & Apple Podcasts