The WONDER WORLD album marks MacKenzie’s return to music after a 15-year break. Produced and engineered by Phil Dubnick, the album was inspired by GRANT’s time away from music working as a school counselor in a high-poverty and high-trauma preschool covering themes such as self-reckoning, feminine empowerment and overcoming negative mindsets.
WONDER WORLD features songs written by MacKenzie beyond the cover of“Borderline.” The album’s first offering was “Putting Down Some Things,” the video for which was premiered by Americana Highways. Beautifully written and sung by MACKENZIE, the song is a moving and infectious country song about self-renewal which Americana Highways praised, stating that “Grant’s songwriting is informed by witnessing a wave of these elements of the human experience, and the gentle easiness of her vocals helps to soothe the soul.” Read the press release here.
As a naturally gifted musician who is a classically trained pianist, MacKenzie has been writing and singing for as long as she can remember. A native of Syracuse, New York, and the daughter of two classically trained musicians, she effortlessly blends the clarity of her singing voice with the raw emotion in her lyrics. After three years at the University of Michigan, she transferred to Berklee in Boston, where she received positive feedback on her songwriting from her professors and peers alike. GRANT relocated to Nashville in 2000 after visiting the city with friends on spring break and discovering that it immediately felt like home.
Just before moving, she’d made an independent album that attracted the attention of a hit songwriter in Nashville, who invited her to write and record together if she ever came to town. That connection helped open the doors to the city's songwriting community, as she developed an audience through playing writers rounds and releasing the 2006 album, The Laundry Room Glamour Hour. Around this same time, she also married and started a family, but gradually she became disillusioned with the music industry and her first marriage ended.
Now remarried and raising three children (a high schooler, a middle schooler, and a preschooler), she is once again using music as a way to connect with others and herself.
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