Road Warrior Of The Year Marty Hom Talks Shakira, Olivia Rodrigo & Stevie Nicks Tours

As one of the most beloved folks working in the production side of the live business, it’s surprising that tour director/tour manager Marty Hom had never before won the Pollstar Award for Road Warrior of the Year. Fellow tour director/tour manager David Klein summed it up in a comment on Instagram, saying Hom is “The Gold Standard.”

Accepting the award in April was extra special because his longtime client Stevie Nicks – whom he calls “one of the kindest, gentlest souls” – also took the stage that evening to be inducted into the Pollstar Live! Hall of Fame.

Along with Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, Hom works with artists including Shakira, Olivia Rodrigo and Barbra Streisand. He’s recently been tour manager for The Rolling Stones and Beyoncé’s last two tours, 2023’s “Renaissance World Tour” and 2016’s “Formation World Tour.” Last year, Hom was named to the MusiCares Board of Directors.

Pollstar: You’ve worked with Stevie Nicks for over 25 years now. Any stories you’d like to share from your time on the road?
Marty Hom: One thing about Stevie is she is one of the kindest, gentlest souls of all the people that I report to. I mean she does so many things for other people – not to get credit or acknowledgement. She used to – again she doesn’t advertise it – she used to go to Walter Reed Hospital and visit with the wounded soldiers. …

There’s a story that nobody knows. During 9/11, I was out on tour with the Backstreet Boys and I had a carpenter that I had worked with on that tour and we played Boston the night before and the carpenter was a guy named Danny Lee. And Danny stayed overnight in Boston because he was flying home to have his first child with his wife. And so he was on one of the planes that went into the towers. And it was very devastating for all of us. [His wife] Kelly after she had the baby wanted to get back to I think it was the Pittsburgh area to be with her family and the flights were challenging at that time to fly after 9/11. Stevie told me to get her a tour bus and have the tour bus drive Kelly across the country with the baby to Pittsburgh and she would pay for the whole thing. So, they basically loaded up everything they could in the bus and they took the baby and we drove them home to Pittsburgh. Stories like that are endless, with Stevie, she is, again, such a giving, caring person.

You’re working on Shakira’s “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour.” How’s that going?
Shakira’s awesome. I’ve been with Shakira for 16 years. Look, I love her. We’ve been touring South America. She has brought the biggest production down to South America to tour with than any other artist. I think Taylor went down there but she only played three cities. Shakira goes and we were down there for almost eight weeks. It’s had its challenges, but we got through it and she’s going to go back and do another Mexico run, which was very, very successful.

Initially, Shakira was going to do arenas and then switched to stadiums. What was that like on your end?
We’re getting ready to start North America in mid-May and we’re doing a combination of stadiums and arenas that we were unable to play in November and December. So that’ll be interesting because we’re going to have a dual production. I mean, it’ll be the same production in a sense, but obviously when we go to arenas we’re going to chop the production down and make it a little bit smaller.

And you have Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts World Tour.”
I think she’s just such an incredible, grounded human being. She’s real and, for me, it’s very, very refreshing to work with a new artist like this. I remember when I interviewed with Olivia for the job, I said that hopefully what I can bring to the table is the right way to tour, how to take care of the crew and the men and women who work for you. I certainly won’t be around at the end of your career, but it’s just an honor to work with her at the beginning of her career, to help guide her down that path. She’s an incredible live performer.

Anything else you can share about the principles that guide you in being a tour manager?
I would encourage new tour managers to bring empathy and sensitivity to the table because I think it’s so important to look after the men and women on the tour. When I first started, it was like, you don’t miss a show, you just work your ass off, right? We ask a lot of the men and women who tour. We ask them to sacrifice a great deal for an artist. We ask them to leave their families [and] their homes for long periods of time …

But lives still go on, people get married, there’s graduations, special birthdays and deaths in families. And you can’t ask people to miss those kinds of things. So on the tours that I am doing now, you’ve got to give people some days off. You have to be understanding and compassionate to let those people go attend those things. And they’re going to be better for your tour after they’ve come back from those things.

Work/life balance and advocating for mental health is so important. I know you’re also passionate about MusiCares.
MusiCares has helped so many of my colleagues and people I have toured with. It’s just an incredible organization.
Talking about mental health, I think that’s another aspect of the touring industry that’s so important, that we’ve neglected and not really understood. I’m trying my best to bring that to touring, too. I think it’s important that you try to, if your tour can afford it, to offer services for those people on tour to just have another ear for somebody to listen to them. We brought mental health on Beyoncé’s tour. I’ve done it on Olivia Rodrigo. I just recently did on Shakira’s tour. I see the future moving into that area.