Hamilton-based This Mad Desire’s new single was recorded during the pandemic and involved collaboration with musicians across North America. While attending online Toronto-based music conference Indie 101, singer Mackenzie Kristjon was recording the forthcoming album Open Hearts Open Minds. The album already featured collaborations with Dan Konopka (OK Go) in California and Leon Harrison (The Lazys) from Australia, and so Kristjon thought it might be fun to make it open to anyone who wanted something to do while in lockdown.
For the title track Open Hearts Open Minds released to streaming services on April 15, Kristjon involved singers from Vancouver to Cape Breton in Canada and from San Francisco to Philadelphia in the USA. Around 40 people reached out and around half actually submitted vocals.
The song itself was originally inspired by a parental rights’ organization who were looking for an anthem. They supplied hundreds of pages of documents of the most heart-wrenching stories of parental alienation. However, Mackenzie Kristjon decided to take it in a more universal direction about rising beyond challenges and opening hearts and minds to our shared humanity in all its various struggles. On the day the lead vocals were recorded, Kristjon even crowdsourced lines for the second verse on Facebook, which came from old friend Craig Norris, singer of the Kramdens and morning show host for the CBC in Kitchener-Waterloo.
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