Open Hearts Open Minds, the title track for the forthcoming album Open Hearts Open Minds from Hamilton-based This Mad Desire, is now available everywhere! 

This Mad Desire's new single was recorded during the pandemic and involved collaboration with musicians across North America. While attending music conference Indie 101, singer Mackenzie Kristjon was recording the album Open Hearts Open Minds. The album already featured collaborations with Dan Konopka (OK Go) in California and Leon Harrison (The Lazys, Bandwagon Workshops) from Australia, and so Kristjon thought it might be fun to make it open to anyone who wanted something to do while in lockdown.  

Kristjon said, “I felt there might be some benefit to the universe to have all of these people singing the phrase Open Hearts Open Minds in various places while alone in lockdown, it might bring people together in a small but positive way like pinpricks of light in a COVID darkness. And hopefully it provided a worthy distraction from the nightly COVID news report.” 

For the title track Open Hearts Open Minds, 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. 

Lyrically, the song 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. 

“I sing about having a friend in an old steeltown, which is a nod to Hamilton, where I’ve lived for the past few years, which is also why I included a Hamilton streetscape on the single cover. Although Hamilton is very quickly gentrifying, it still has working class roots and the people are very salt of the earth.” 

CREDITS 
Written and produced by Mackenzie Kristjon. 
Lead vocals, guitars, bass and keyboards by Mackenzie Kristjon. 
Drums by Dan Konopka. 
Mastered by Phil Demetro at Lacquer Channel. 

Background vocals (in no particular order): 
Leslie Ramsey-Taylor – R&B singer from Toronto, who is a friend of my frequent producer Mark Zubek. She has the greatest voice. 
Jessica Magoch – award-winning jazz singer from Philadelphia. She won the 2019 Philadelphia Music Award for Jazz and just recently won the John Lennon Songwriting Competition Song of the Week. AND she duets with me on our version of Christmas classic Deck The Halls. Try to imagine if we both did not attend that conference! 
Joyce Aldrich – who I met at Indie 101. She’s a talented jazz singer from Toronto. 
Erica “Captain” Corbo – another talented jazz artist and pop songwriter from Philadelphia! She performs as a pianist, vocalist and performance artist; both solo and as part of the free improv collective Space Whale Orchestra. I actually met her on Instagram one day when I was randomly researching Philadelphia music. She was organizing her concert series Warp Factor 9 at the time. They would put chairs out on the sidewalk and perform through an open window. I was very impressed! 
Kim Thompson – country singer from Calgary, Alberta, who I met at Indie 101. We have gone on to write a Christmas song called This Christmas which she recorded and was produced by Chris Birkett (Sinead O’Connor, Buffy Ste. Marie, Def Leppard, etc. etc.). Chris also produces music for Joyce Aldrich (mentioned above). Small world! 
Glen MacLeod – guitarist/songwriter in the band Crash World out of Vancouver. He’s a very talented guy and extremely friendly. 
Jason Dunford (Samaki Mkuu) – Jason is based in San Francisco and this is verbatim from his Wikipedia page: He is a Kenyan Olympic swimmer, media personality, rapper and entrepreneur. During his swimming career, he was predominantly a butterfly and freestyle sprinter winning gold medals at the Commonwealth Games, Universiade, All-Africa Games and African Championships, and reaching finals at the Olympics, World Championships and Short Course World Championships. He also held African, Universiade and Olympic records. He has worked as a broadcast journalist for the BBC, is a co-founder and adviser to software company, Safi and currently serves as the CEO of Baila Entertainment whilst performing as Samaki Mkuu, one half of the rap duo Romantico & Samaki Mkuu. I only learned about all the swimming after he sent in his vocals! 
Reinhard Kypke – Reinhard is based in Guelph and very proudly from Berlin. He has been working with me on and off in various capacities for years. We even performed together in Iceland! 
Brian Doucette – Brian is a cool singer from Nova Scotia who I met through Mark Zubek. Definitely worth checking out! 
Fluency Grey – Fluency is an indie rocker in Ottawa. Very cool guy! 
Simon Pellett – Simon is British-born but lives in Texas and aside from being a really great heavy metal guitarist, he also has a podcast called Music On Your Own Terms which looks at the entrepreneurial side of the music industry in addition to mental health. 
Sandeep Swaminathan – Sandeep is the frontman/lead singer for an indie band called The Spiral Theory based in Toronto. We’ve been friends since meeting each other at Indie Week back in 2020. 
Paul QuAnthem – Paul is a Toronto area singer-songwriter that records under the QuAnthem banner and he definitely serves up some very anthemic tunes! 

Lyrics: 

Open hearts open minds 
No surprise what you’ll find 
I have a friend in an old steeltown 
He can’t believe what goes around 

Times will change and we’ll be strong 
We may feel lost 
Barely hanging on 
And they don’t know how our hearts melt like snow 
From all those times so long ago 

Are you with me? 

Open hearts open minds 
Open hearts 
Why don’t you open mine? 

Take a chance on a new romance 
I already know your secret plans 
I have a friend in an old steeltown 
He can’t believe what goes around 

Open hearts open minds 
Open hearts 
Why don’t you open mine? 
Open hearts open minds 
Open hearts 
Why don’t you open mine?