[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Tim,

There are a ton of places we’d love to visit, and of course another trip to the US has been on our minds for many years now. I honestly doubt it will happen anytime soon though, and for now we’re not spending any time making travel plans.

We’re too busy with this new album and the world is too insane right now to make any concrete plans 😉 But rest assured that we will take you all along through the power of video making to wherever we’re going next!

All the best from across the big pond!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks, Tim!

We’ll be doing a Half Marathon later in the year and a few 5k and 10k races but nothing as intense as that trail marathon. We’re trying to get a run in a couple of times a week, but the goal is now just to have fun and enjoy it rather than any serious training like we did before. 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thank you, Jeff!

We are still both in love with that song, it’s perfect in every way. We recorded it as a birthday present for our late friend and supporter Steve, so it holds a particularly dear place in our hearts. It’s the icing on the cake that it is doing well on YouTube 🙂

Thanks for the kind message, we send you all the best from across the pond!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Dale!

Your post reminded us that it is supposedly “meteor season” here in the UK and we should really make time to do some stargazing these next few days while the skies are clear during this current heatwave we are in. We do that way too rarely but everytime I look up on a clear night I am so fascinated.

The only constellation I was ever able to remember and point out to people was Ursa Major so I’ll go with that as my favourite 😉 I really should learn more!

We hope you enjoyed the movie, and if you saw Janitor Joe in the sky we hope you gave him a little wave 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Denny,

Lisa is 5 minutes older but I am taller, so who really is the little sister here? 😉

[Rudolf Wagner]

I also considered this a nice feature and tried to provide it as long as possible but now it looks like the plugin is no longer supported.
https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/bbpress-simple-view-counts/

Until I find another solution I have to deactivate it because the numbers it shows now don’t make sense anymore.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Jung,

I had a look at it and saw that the plugin that provides this functionality is still active. That means that either updates on the theme or WordPress itself or on the BuddyBoss platform (the basis of this website) made the views disappear.

At the moment we have a very tight schedule to finish all of our most urgent projects. As soon as I have more time I will stage (make a copy of) the site and dig in deeper to find the reason for this behaviour.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi John,

We do sometimes and you’re right, we love how some of the questions spark great discussions! Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to follow every thread and respond to the individual follow-up comments so we usually just respond to the initial question but we like reading forum replies and comments in our down-time. 🙂

♥

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Lynn,

For Hotel California, what you hear and what you see has little to do with one another haha! We recorded the music video way before we had finished the recording for it as we didn’t have enough time to get it ready.

If I remember correctly, we mimed to the original recording when we filmed the video and only later matched it with our own recording. Which is why what you see and what you hear (also in terms of the guitars we used) doesn’t always match up. We had to work with what we got! So in the video I play the Nylon string Yamaha we brought on the trip, and in the studio I believe I played my very first Strat “copy” which we bought from the Austrian equivalent of Aldi. I always thought it sounded great given its price 😉

♥

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Jacki!

I’ll send you an email with the link where I got it from! The hoodie was actually one of my birthday presents for Lisa but she ended up letting me wear it for the trip, haha.

It’s really warm and fit the Welsh countryside perfectly 😉

I hope you’re enjoying your day!

Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Jung,

It depends on the gig. Normally on bigger stages the sound levels are much more controllable. You have the big PA that points towards the audience, away from the stage and smaller monitor boxes in front of, and pointing at, the individual musicians that feed them their custom mix in a volume they want. You have enough distance from the drummer and the guitar & bass amplifier on stage as to not go deaf 😉

In smaller rooms and Clubs however, (like the Cavern club), sometimes you are only a few feet away from the drumkit and the amps behind you. Then in order to hear anything but crashing cymbals, you need the monitor quite loud too (the speaker pointing at you), so you can sing in tune and hear what you and everyone else is playing.

So as you can imagine the volume levels on stage can get pretty loud and it is totally advised to wear ear protection or you will lose some hearing after a while. (We try to be better about this as time goes on.)

Of course, the best thing to do is wear “In-ear monitors” which block out the stage noise and feed you a custom mix, protect your ears and greatly reduce the volume on stage. Here is a good summary of how they work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xD0tpaT1Nw

Personally, I have never grown fond of wearing them, despite all their benefits because I simply don’t like the feeling of being somewhat isolated from the audience sounds and the actual noise around me. But were we to go on another tour, I would definitely give them another chance. If you look closely you can see Mona using them during the last Cavern Club show!

Hope that explains things ✌️

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Andy,

there was no need for that since we’re the ones that got the birthday card but we’ll gladly say “you’re welcome”. 😉

Thank you for the nice surprise, your order, your comments over the last months and the support here in the MLT Club. It helps us to be able to move along on our journey and create the music that’s bringing everyone together here!

♥

[Rudolf Wagner]

THANKS, I’m glad you like the new videos (and the old snowflake video … one of my favourites ;-))!!

I had a real fun time figuring out and coming up with that “Stuck In The Middle With You” guitar line. There was so much to play around with!

From memory I didn’t think that the song bears any resemblance to Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” but then I had another listen. Haha, I get where they’re coming from. That slide guitar sounds pretty familiar 😉 I wouldn’t have guessed that it was intentional but it’s a great sound.

“You always talk about the team approach to song writing. Can you name a few songs where each of you came up with the original idea?”

It’s sometimes hard to pin-point as there is often not a lot left of the “original idea” once it passes between the 3 of us (Mona, Lisa, Papa Rudi) a few times 😉

But if you take some songs from Orange … “No More Worries Company” was an old song that Papa Rudi wrote back in the 80s, Mona developed the Club 27 lyrics, I had the original idea for “Sweet Lorraine” (music) however the others are to blame (mostly) for the words ;), Mona and me developed the original idea for “That’s Alright” together and the spark of “Waiting For The Waiter” was born out of a conversation Dad and Michaela were having …

We like the Wagner & Wagner & Wagner & Wagner approach 😉

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Roy,

We love First Aid Kit’s harmonies and listened to them every now and then when they first popped up on our radar a few years ago. I haven’t really followed their career since then and I never heard of Joseph but I’ll check them out!

Of course it warms our hearts a little when we see other sisters making music together because we know how special that is. When it comes to harmonies a relationship always comes in handy! It can be rewarding in so many more ways.

At the end of the day it still comes down to good songwriting and the music for us but we would lie if we said that siblings making music together didn’t hold a soft spot in our hearts for obvious reasons. 😉

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Diana,

I always just thought of “Sound Of Silence” as a beautiful, slightly “dark” song but never paid close attention to the lyrics beyond the first verse.

There are so many layered metaphors that came to life the more I engaged myself in the lyrics. I think it would be wrong for me to say “what it’s about” because it’s one of those songs that will speak to everyone differently, depending on where they are at in their lives and their view of the world.

It’s just such a tasteful and artistic way of tackling the subject of willful ignorance, human crisis, the unknown, the secrets kept from us, and the modern world in general, and I also think the neon god line is just brilliant … and to think that it was recorded in ‘64!

I’m glad you’re putting more effort into face-to-face interactions rather than social media … real connections seem even more precious now, don’t they?

I hope you’re enjoying your evening!

Mona