CMA Fest To Offer Mental Health Services At 2025 Event Via ECCHO Live’s All Access On Site

The Country Music Association (CMA) is continuing its commitment to investing in its members and supporting the growth of the industry by partnering with ECCHO Live to offer free, on-site counseling at next week’s CMA Fest via the nonprofit’s confidential mental health support program, All Access On Site. Counseling sessions will be available to artists, touring professionals, crew members and event staff.

“If we take care of our people, then the industry is going to be taken care of. Successful individuals create a successful industry. We are of the mindset that when we pour into people, we are pouring into our business,” Tiffany Kerns, who serves as senior vice president of industry relations & philanthropy at the CMA and executive director at CMA Foundation, told Pollstar.

CMA Fest takes place June 5-8 in downtown Nashville, with a lineup featuring Brooks & Dunn, Ashley McBryde, Little Big Town, Carín León, Colbie Caillat, Darius Rucker, Dierks Bentley, Kelsea Ballerini, Blake Shelton, Cole Swindell, Luke Bryan, Maddie & Tae, BODHI, Marcus King, Megan Moroney and many more artists.

Earlier this year, Touring Career Workshop (TCW) rebranded itself as ECCHO Live, an acronym for Education, Community, Connection, Health, and Opportunity. For more than a decade, the nonprofit organization has supported live event professionals, including its All Access Program, which provides four free confidential counseling sessions with pre-approved therapists to all professionals, their spouses or partners, and dependents.

In 2023, the organization expanded its mental health services to festivals, fairs and large music events with All Access On Site. The program has grown from three festivals in 2023 to nine in 2024, with a goal of 18 events this year. Additional events offering All Access On Site in 2025 include major festivals like Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, as well as the CMA Awards in November.

ECCHO Live is 100% supported, sponsored and funded by industry professionals, including being recently selected as a recipient of a $100,000 donation from CMA as part of its investment in mental health organizations.

Kerns explained that CMA Fest featured All Access On Site at the 2024 edition as a “year of learning,” with hopes of returning with ways to bolster their efforts. With the 2025 festival, organizers have shifted the location that will host the mental health sessions to an area where folks have to go to get their credentials. 

“I think everyone’s going to enjoy this idea of going to almost this oasis … it’s off the beaten path. It’s a nice break. So they’re already walking into an environment that starts to feel a little less stressful,” Kerns says.

Folks can sign up for private counseling and coaching sessions with licensed professionals by either scanning a QR code or stopping by the booth. No insurance or referrals will be required.

Though CMA Fest and ECCHO Live are encouraging people to sign up for sessions prior to being on site, Kerns emphasizes that you can take advantage of the services in real time. 

“Life happens in real time,” Kerns says. “So, I may not need or feel like I need to speak to someone today. Therefore, I’m not signing up. However, if I wake up on Thursday of CMA Fest, and I have anxiety or something’s happened in my personal life that is being carried into my professional life, we need to make sure that we are reminding them in real time that they have this resource that they can be taking advantage of. … So, if they come to the tent and they say, ‘I need to speak to somebody.’ Our job is to figure out how to make that happen.”

She adds that services will be available to everyone who is credentialed at CMA Fest — anyone who may have a crisis or just need a safe space to have a conversation with someone with an unbiased opinion. Kerns says, “We are allowing folks that aren’t necessarily just [in] live but may work for a record label or maybe a publicist. It’s important that we are creating safe spaces in the live sector, not just for the live sector.”

ECCHO Live will also be offering Mental Health Mobile sessions via golf cart, bringing support directly to those who need it.

“That was a fun thing we started last year at Bonnarroo ’24,” says Chris Lisle​, who serves as the executive director and founder of ECCHO Live and is also on the board of CMA, as well as working in a variety of roles including production designer, lighting designer, production manager, and show producer.

“If you haven’t been there, it’s a massive show site, so you kind of have to have a golf cart to get around the site to get to catering and [other] things. So, we had this fun idea to brand it as a mental health mobile,” Lisle adds. “And the idea that we’d … see people walking just trying to get from point A to point B, back of house. We’re like, ‘Hey, if you want to hop in, we’ll give you a ride to catering and [you can] tell us how your day is going, what’s going on.’ And just even a quick five to 10-minute conversation and letting people vent or download can make a huge impact in somebody’s day. So that’s something that we’ve enjoyed being able to do at a lot of these festivals.” 

The nonprofit will also be giving out Wellness Recovery Kits On The Go, which Lisle explains will “have some basic essentials that we all need working these festivals out in the hot sun, you know, cleaning wipes, sunscreen, lip balm, just things like that that can help make our days all a little bit better.”

CMA Fest will be offering 16 sessions per day during the event.

Lisle notes that the number of individuals who’ve accessed the services varies per festival, with up to 25 to 30 people.

“We’ve seen some significant impacts in people’s lives,” Lisle says. “And without getting into too many details, I can tell you we’ve had a thwarted suicide at Austin City Limits two years ago; we had a self-harm incident that was dealt with and addressed at Lollapalooza ’23. I feel like us just being there and being able to respond to these people who are in crisis has at least felt like we’ve made an impact into their quality of life and their will and want to live.  I’ve always said to the whole team, ‘Look, if one person leaves this festival impacted by what we’ve done, it is completely worth it,’ and I believe that.”

Kerns adds, “We hope that the live event sector is taking advantage of this, but the reality is that mental health is something that every single professional in our business needs to pay attention to and prioritize, and we feel strongly about that. … The more people that experience [these services], the more people can share their success with it and what it allowed them to do. And that is what we have to keep encouraging. Take advantage of this resource and then let others know what the experience was like because it will allow [counseling] to be a more normal and widely accepted resource that people will start to access.”