Admin Rudolf Wagner
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Hi Rick!
I had to go back and look through the footage to make out what guitars were on stage that evening but I think I’ve got it!
So besides the Rickenbacker and Gretsch we are playing, and the acoustic guitar that Mike Sweeney is using, here is what I know about the other ones …
The white Gibson Les Paul (on the right), the black Fender Stratocaster (in the middle) and acoustic Takamine (on the left) all belong to Paddy O’Hare, who was performing after us that night together with Mike Sweeney and their band. It was a double bill that evening! 🙂
We didn’t play any of these guitars, so, unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about them. From what I remember they all sounded solid and well balanced during the gig though. Paddy loves his heavy rock and blues solos and his gear fits his playing style.
The two guitars in the stand center stage are my trusty Epiphone J160E on the right and a nylon string Taylor on the left. You’ll know the Epiphone from a lot of videos, especially our earlier ones like While My Guitar Gently Weeps, When I’m Sixty-Four and God Only Knows.
As far as I can remember we’ve only ever used the Taylor 712ce-N in the video for June. It’s an absolutely stunning guitar!
Hope you’re doing well!
Mona -
Hello Dale and welcome to the MLT Club 🙂 We hope you’ve already started to make yourself at home and checked out some of the Club’s content. We’re very happy to have you here!
If you’ve got any more questions, feel free to ask us over at the “ask the MLT” board (we’ll get back to your Woolgoose question there soon ♥ ) or send us a message to mlt-club@monalisa-twins.com
Stay groovy! -
The idea makes us chuckle but to be honest, at the moment we wouldn’t consider re-recording any of our original songs in German right now. We can’t see that working all too well 😉
Do you know the story of how George Martin had to personally drag the Beatles to the studio because they initially refused to do these recordings? This story cracks us up every time we read it!
Since we don’t have anyone dragging us anywhere we’ll probably give this one a miss.
When we used to play “She Loves You” at the Cavern Club we sometimes snuck in a German verse in the middle of the song though and it was so entertaining watching the faces in the audience when we made the switch to German.
The hardcore Beatles fans started grinning because they knew exactly what we were doing and the other half of the audience looked totally confused and had no idea what was going on.
🙂
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Hi Jacki!
We prefer baking over cooking too but it’s a slippery slope once you start having muffins for dinner twice in a row 😉
Both of us are actually quite big foodies (although we’re always trying to keep it on the healthy side) so we love to experiment with different flavours and new dishes. Lisa is more of an expert when it comes to baking and she makes a MEAN lemon cheesecake. I pride myself for my authentic Italian Tiramisu.
In terms of “Culinary of Shame” we assume you mean cooking mishaps?
Personally, I burn things on a regular basis. To the point where it’s become a running joke. For me the stove seems to have two settings – “off” and “level 11” but I’m trying to improve. “Patience” is not one of my fortes as it turns out!
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Most of it are super old recordings that we found … sampled, stretched and twisted. We love the sound of those super early voice-recordings and they fitted perfectly with the sort of 1920’s/40’s feel we were going for with this song 🙂
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Oh, and I nearly forgot … it’s also the first thing you see in this video 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3JnZBz0Zro -
Hi Rick,
It’s such a weird and wonderful guitar. We picked it up at a Vintage guitar shop in Dorsden/Germany before we started working on our “When We’re Together” album. It’s a 12 string, hollow-body Framus (old German guitar brand) with a tremolo and built-in damper built in the early 70’s. Such a unique instrument unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
Dad and I gave it a proper set up, polished it up a little and now it’s totally playable (At 00:51 you can see me and Dad working on it for a second https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzt0AtpcLaE). We used it for “Nothing Is In Vain” (you can hear it really well in the intro as well as spot it in the video) and “Won’t You Listen Now”, like you mentioned.
And it’s a song I’ve always sang lead on, in the Chorus anyway. For the verses we both sing so there isn’t really a “lead” there.
Hope that helps 🙂
Thanks for the questions! -
Well, we are able to answer that question to a T by looking at the original footage to see what we were discussing that very moment 😛 So … In the first clip, John just finished showing us some alternating fingerpicking bluegrass techniques (which he is really good at btw!). I go on to say that this technique is so much more interesting for accompanying yourself in comparison to plain old strumming. Mona then goes, “yeah, it makes you go from this (making a normal face) to this (making a smiley face).” That’s what John is laughing about 🙂 It was a sweet moment.
In the second clip he is playing a beautiful finger picking version of “Walk Right Back” and I am trying to remember who the song is by (Everly Brothers).
Tada, good to have the video evidence or I could have made up some more fantastical topics of conversation. But even crazier stories would have probably been true as he told us some pretty unbelievable tales from his past.We’re glad to have some of it on video so if we get around to it, we might put some of it together for the club. Looking at the footage reminded us of all the great stories.
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Howard, tiny, dried up little buds from some gnarly, thorny bushes around the San Francisco hills surely still count as flowers, don’t they? It was hard to find the wild fresh daffodils and tulips there in the middle of summer 😉
A big thank you, I’m glad you like the video and recording! -
Love all your stories!!! Thanks for sharing 🙂
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Thanks Jung! We’re definitely enjoying the summer here, in fact a few days ago was the hottest day ever recorded in UK history. We’re roasting here … but loving it 😉 Reminds us of the scorching hot summers back home in Austria. Which actually kind of leads into the answer to your question …
Well, first, thanks for sharing the school bus story. That sounds like the cheerful, “everything-is-right-with-the-world” sort of childhood memory that would stay with you forever.We have many like this regarding Beatles. We must have been in 7 or 8th grade (around 13 – 14) when for a time in our lives The Beatles took over everything 🙂 And I mean everything. I don’t think we talked about anything else or listened to any other music for a good solid few months if not a year (thank god they have so many songs :-)). I’ll never forget this one day, when I walked home from school, listening to (of course) the Beatles on my MP3 player. I think I’ve written about this day before in one of the blog posts and it seems like a pretty insignificant setting but for me it sums up the effect the Beatles had on us. I got off the bus, the sun was shining and it was playing “Getting Better”.
And for a moment I didn’t care about anything else in the world. School, friends, heart-ache, worries, … All I could think of was how in the world music can be this beautiful. And I cried and I cried because I was so happy that something like this exists. And it wasn’t the lyrics in particular that evoked those emotions, it was about everything those 4 boys created, the beauty and spirit and this feeling of friendship and unity you felt through their music. I was the closest to real-life magic I ever felt … forget Harry Potter or flying carpets, the Beatles were witchcraft, that’s how good they are 😛
Like I said, walking home from school, getting emotional over a rather cheerful Beatles song doesn’t sound that significant but it’ll stay with me as one of my most precious memories of my teenage years. It showed me what music can do, how it can transform and move you in ways few things can.
Stay beatley 🙂
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The ” Notify me of follow-up replies via email” checkbox is now ticked per default as we agree that this is probably the more convenient setting for most people.
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Thanks for reporting that bug. Last week we had a heavy spam-user attack where suddenly thousands of “people” tried to register on our site. These were of course no real people but artificial spam-bots. Therefore we had to change our login url into one that spam bots can’t find so easily. We forgot to update all the links on all pages so we are glad you told us the ones not working.
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Yes, finally we found the cause of that. Whenever somebody posted something, his display name was changed to the username. As this is in many cases the email address we had this strange behaviour of suddenly showing the email address instead of the full name. It should be working now.
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Holymoly Angelo, I’m impressed! You have a better overview of what we’ve played over the years than we do ourselves. Wow!
You were spot on with nearly everything. The Ovation you mentioned belonged to a friend in the United States (the one we played in the “California Dreaming” video) and the black “Strat” you spotted was my very first guitar I ever owned, a cheap Strat copy (the brand was “Golden Tone”) from Aldi 😛 And we only own one sunburst Strat, the one from the “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” video belonged to our guitar teacher back then.
It’s crazy how long the list has gotten by now. We still own most of the guitars we ever played, though we have sold or traded some occasionally. We store them in their original cases away from moisture and too much heat.
Now to answer your questions:
“what is for each one of you your favorite nylon strings electroacoustic, favorite steel strings electroacoustic, favorite electric, 12 strings guitar, possibly with a comment to let us learn something from your experience.”– Okay, so for Nylon I really like my Cordoba, especially for live shows. I’ve taken it on tour with me and like that it is a real working guitar. Nothing super precious that I’d be scared to take on the road, it has a built in mic and the piezo sounds fairly balanced as well (as far as piezo pickups go). It sounds like a nylon string is supposed to sound, doesn’t feedback a lot and is comfortable to play.
– Steel string acoustics are more of Mona’s thing as I generally find myself playing electric or classical guitars most of the time. But when we do play acoustically together (and I’m not on nylon) we often use the two Martins. They both have a Roland Cosm Preamp built in that simulates a full toned sound as if the guitars were miked up directly (instead of the typical harsh piezo pickup sound).
– Favourite electric – easy pick – my Gretsch Duo Jet – because it is the best thing ever made. period. 😉
– For 12 strings, I have a thing for the Höfner acoustic. There is something so mellow about the tone and the playability is superb for a 12-string. We call her the Big Bertha. It was an impulse buy when we visited the big music store in Cologne/Germany. For 400€ we couldn’t leave her behind.
And how nice to see Michael and Philipp mentioned. It’s been a long time since we’ve played with them but as far as we know they are both keeping super busy back home in Austria, playing in various bands and doing studio stuff. 🙂
Thanks for the questions!
