[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Serge,
Thanks a lot, we are so happy to hear you are enjoying the new album! 🙂
We covered “That’s All Right, Mama” a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjQC6uaCcFs
We would love to try some more Elvis in the future and maybe one day we’ll get around to it! 

Have a great day!

 

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Michael!

We cut out some of the announcements and talking in between songs for the sake of making the album flow nicely. We talked a lot about this being our last residency Cavern show, thanking the audience and staff, etc. most of which wasn’t really suited for what we wanted to be a timeless CD. We also gave away some T-shirts at one point 🙂

Listening to that every time you put on the album would probably be quite distracting so we decided to take those parts out 🙂

 

[Rudolf Wagner]

I’d say that the most important factor is that we have to really like the song. Nearly all the songs we’ve covered, really mean something to us. There is always something about the composition, the song’s meaning, lyrics, sound or its ties to our own life story that makes us choose a song.
We generally don’t cover things we’re not really into, even if we think they would do well on YouTube for example.

A song has to work well for our voices, our style and whatever concept or project we’re currently working on (Duo Sessions, a new Beatles compilation CD, a homage or Birthday present to someone, etc.). If they are popular songs that could potentially gain us new fans by doing well on YouTube, that is just an added bonus. But actually, if we learnt one thing it is that there is no way to really predict how well a song is going to do. We’ve had “popular” songs doing rather poorly (in terms of views) while more obscure songs got loads more clicks. There really is no foolproof recipe.

So in summary, it’s songs we love, we can play well and songs we either think we can give an interesting twist or cover in a way that we don’t lose any of its original beauty. At least that’s what we’re always trying to do 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

This answer always changes but I always especially loved performing the heavier things like My Generation or Revolution. They are just so much fun to do live.

We recently uploaded “My Generation” to YouTube and it’s probably evident that we’re having a pretty good time 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf1LzrSFpYQ

[Rudolf Wagner]

I know this is a super late reply, but we still want to say … You’re welcome! And thank you for getting the album ♥

[Rudolf Wagner]

When we first got the idea to possibly do a student exchange we initially thought about the US. We had visited California twice before that and had such a positive experience there, so it seemed like the obvious choice. We quickly found out that we were a year too young to apply for a spot there (you had to be 15 and we were only 14) so that option got ruled out.

We definitely wanted to visit an English speaking country so there was a limited option of places that took in younger students: UK, New Zealand and Australia

Australia seemed the most exciting! 🙂

It always felt like such an exotic, intriguing and adventurous place, and of course it turned out to be just that!

Michaela did a lot of research on various schools there that had a strong music/art focus and we happened to find some great ones in Adelaide. We still think it was a wonderful place with lots of amazing people ♥

[Rudolf Wagner]

Yes, the problem was caused by a conflict between the upload plugin for the forum and the one for the comments. We now changed the upload plugin for the forum and it seems to work now.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Bill,

We get this question quite a lot and we thank you for your interest. Sadly, DVDs are becoming a “dying medium” with fewer people owning a DVD player these days, and that makes it economically non-viable for us to release DVDs.

Also, the copyright and royalties issue is really complicated if you are selling covers in video form. Unlike selling audio covers, there is no general rule/fee when it comes to video and you’d have to make contracts with the individual publishers and copyright owners of every single song. In short it is super complicated and potentially very expensive.

Which is why we decided not to make a DVD but keep them as a MLT Club special and post a few of the clips to our public YouTube channel instead.

Thanks,
Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Rick,

We never really had a moment like you described. Becoming more and more confident in our abilities has been a long ongoing process and I think we will always suffer from the typical artist sicknesses of being our own worst critics. That being said, normally with a bit of distance we do have occasional bouts of feeling super proud and very accomplished with what we create 🙂

But I wouldn’t describe it as something that we discovered we “had”. Everything we’ve done has been hard team work and lots or hours of practise and work. So it wasn’t some sort of “inner magic” we discovered but more a long process of work 🙂 I hope that makes sense!

“And secondly what have you not been able to do? In other words, What have you missed the most if you had not chosen your career path?”
Doing what we do, the way we do it definitely comes with its sacrifices. They are totally worth it to us but of course having work, life, family and business so intertwined comes with its own challenges.

I guess if we had chosen a different and more “traditional” career path, we would have put more focus on things like creating our own families, have more free time and a more separate work and leisure schedule.

Something we could always see ourselves do since we were little was to work with animals, which isn’t something we do at all these days. So maybe you could say that we miss that about our lives but to be honest I don’t think about that a lot ????‍♀️

Every lifestyle comes with its pros and cons and I’d take our cons over alternative career paths’ cons any day 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

That’s the first time I heard this song, thanks for sharing! The harmonies ❤️ !!
You’re right, the list of cover suggestions we get is endless but at least we often discover new music that way 🙂
Hope all is well and groovy!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Bill,

Yes, it’s me doing the lead vocals on that one ???? Lisa did all the lead guitar parts herself but you’re right, there was lots of harmonic overdubbing involved. I let her figure it out in the studio but if we were to do that song live, it would be so much fun doing it as sort of a guitar battle.

Also funny you mention that song … Keep your eyes peeled ????

[Rudolf Wagner]

The simple answer to that would be yes 🙂

We think we would be making 10 year old Mona and Lisa very proud. We assume that with “your success” you meant the success of what we have accomplished as “MonaLisa Twins” specifically.

It depends on how you define success but by the metrics that matter most to us which would be the impact our music has on other people, the happiness it brings ourselves, the experiences we get to create for other people, the sense of meaning we derive from it and the types of experiences and relationships we get to have ourselves because of this “path”, we consider ourselves very successful 🙂 In many ways things have turned out better than we ever dreamed of.

If you would define success by it’s more measurable aspects like the amount of people that know us, the amount of money we make, albums we’ve released, songs we’ve written etc … of course we are always working on ways to improve that. The more ears that listen, the merrier 🙂 But we’re anything but unhappy with how things are going at the moment.

A long answer to a short question ♥

[Rudolf Wagner]

Welcome to the Club, James and greetings to Phoenix, Arizona! Thanks for joining us and all the other folks who’ve already said hello 🙂
We’re glad you like ORANGE so much! We’re currently working on the next original album … fingers crossed you’ll like it just as much!
Enjoy your time here and always stay groovy!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Haha, gosh that makes us happy!
And we also do that!! Not so much to our own music but we often put on some music and go crazy … beats any other form of cardio ????. Nothing gets you more pumped for a workout than doing the mashed potatoes to some Kinks as a warm-up!

Thanks for sharing this story! Keep dancing!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi John!

When we first moved to the UK in the middle of the summer we had to practise in our conservatory, with the windows wide open due to the boiling heat. We had some really important shows coming up and unfortunately didn’t have the time to come up with any other plan.

Needless to say the neighbours weren’t thrilled about it ???? At one point we had neighbors from two different households gather in front of our door to complain at the same time. But we talked to them and explained the urgency and even invited them in to have a listen, and they were really friendly and understanding afterwards 🙂

But of course we soon tweaked the room, installed some air con so we could keep the windows shut, switched the acoustic drum kit to e-drums and were able to continue practising at a much quieter volume. Since then, no more complaints!

Back in Austria when we were living in a “farmhouse” type village with spaced out gardens we always got a different kind of complaint … our neighbours always wanted us to keep the studio doors open so they could listen in, haha!

Have a great day!