Cure for Paranoia to Headline Inaugural Louder Than Stigma Fest in September

On Saturday, Sep. 6, The Kessler Theater will host Louder Than Stigma Fest, an evening put on by Dallas nonprofit Amplified Minds to highlight “the urgent and growing need for mental health care.”

Cure for Paranoia will headline the event, performing a new single, “No Brainer,” while Sam Cormier, Remy Riley and Gracen Wynn, featured artists with Dallas Sounds Amplified, will open the show. The evening will run from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

“We all play assigned roles throughout this life, whether we like it or not,” Cameron McCloud says in a press release about the new single. “That’s exactly why I gravitate toward the stage—it’s ironically the only place where I don't have to perform. I don’t second-guess or overthink who I am or what I’m doing…I actually don’t give any thought to it at all. Being me stops being complicated. It just becomes a no-brainer.”

The Louder Than Stigma branding originated as an awareness campaign, intended to draw attention to mental health challenges. Lauren O’Connor, the president of Amplified Minds, says they wanted to create Louder Than Stigma Fest to carry that mission forward while bringing the community together, showcasing local artists and providing information about mental health resources.

The show will begin with Cormier, Riley and Wynn. There will be a clothing art auction, with upcycled jackets turned into “a wearable work of art” by local visual artists, including Chris Bingham, Bubba Flint, India Hearne, Lewellyn’s Print Shop, Corey Godfrey-Moulton, Clay Stinnett, and more, available to bid on.

Louder Than Stigma Fest coincides with National Suicide Prevention Month, and O’Connor says Amplified Minds wants to highlight that at the show; the organization was initially founded as a suicide prevention group following the deaths by suicide of local musicians Adam Carter and Frankie Campagna of the band Specter 45. They will host a “Mental Health Activation Area” at the show where information on “suicide prevention, mental health support and community care” will be available.

When programming the event, O’Connor knew they needed to find the right act to headline. She had been aware of Cure for Paranoia for years, but had never had the opportunity to work with them. Cure for Paranoia's name comes from McCloud being placed on medication for bipolar depression and paranoid schizophrenia, but learning that creating music was much more therapeutic than the medication was.

When Amplified Minds learned the group, fronted by McCloud, was available, O’Connor knew they were exactly what the show needed.

”You know, they really do bring a lot of mental health awareness. They like to talk about it. They rap about it. And we just felt like this [would be] the perfect combination to really heighten that Louder Than Stigma logo [and] just bring it all together,” she says.

Tickets for the show are available for purchase starting at $32.42 on Prekindle, but if you cannot attend and still want to learn more about Amplified Minds’ mission, O’Connor encourages interested parties to visit their website. The organization runs off donations and the support of its community partners, which O’Connor says helps fuel its work, both for events like Louder Than Stigma Fest and during its day-to-day operations.

”It’s crucial that we give back to the community as much as we can, because they support us,” she explains. “Without their support, we probably would not still be here after 10 years.”