[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Rick,

I really like the look of that brown Fender tweed strap on my Gretsch. But I’ve been swapping straps from time to time, depending on what I feel like. The MLT straps you mentioned (a great gift from overseas :-)) are super comfortable, so I normally use them on the heavier guitars or when we’re playing longer gigs.

My Gretsch is surprisingly light (it’s partly hollow) so I don’t really have any specific requirement and just use whatever looks and feels best to me.

I’ll stay EXTRA groovy if you stay EXTRA groovy 😀

Best,
Lisa

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hello, hello Brad!

Thank you so much for this extremely cool introduction. As you can imagine, knowing that our music has become part of someone’s breakfast routine, makes our hearts feel soft, fuzzy, furry.

That’s about as sweet as it gets 🙂

We really enjoy getting these sneak peeks into people’s lives, people who allowed our music to become somewhat part of their lives. And of course, thank you for the compliments and kind words!
We hope you’ll enjoy it here in the Club and really appreciate the support!
Much love from all of us to you and your wife, all the way from Liverpool to Idaho <3

See you around!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Jacki,

Do you mean the plus symbols shown here?

When you click them (like I did for the “forum” button in the picture) it opens up the corresponding submenu. The same menu you’d see when hovering over the different buttons with your mouse when on your computer. The plus turns into a minus and you can close the submenu again by clicking the minus.

Does that make sense and is that what you meant?

It is simply a way of structuring the menu on phones and tablets so it doesn’t take up too much space.

Sorry for the late reply but please let us know if that answers your question 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hello Bill,
we’re glad you decided to introduce yourself here in the forum and thank you for joining us a while back already! I guess we have to thank the YouTube/Google recommendations for your ending up here 😉
We’re happy it made you stumble across our music and thank you for following your curiosity into the MLT universe!
So cool to hear from a photographer. I’ve been getting more and more into photography over the last few years and it brings me so much joy 🙂
Even better that you were able to turn your passion into a career.
Thanks for all the encouraging words and for enjoying and appreciating what goes into creating the Club. Don’t hesitate to let us know what you like/dislike or any suggestions as to what content you’d like to see more of.

We’ll see you around and send all the best to Ohio!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks Rick!

For the opening/ending scene we chose a volcano that you could access from one side where the lava had broken through many, many, many years ago, so we only had to walk down a little bit. The other 90% of the ridge were still intact so it looks super deep when scudding down the drone.

We parked the car some 100 meters away from the outer edge and had to do just a little bit of hiking to get to the inside. Dad started the drone from there and we communicated through walkie-talkies to set up the shots and get some feedback. He had a better overview from his drone’s perspective and could tell us where to stand/lie to be positioned right in the middle of the crate which was hard to gage from the inside.

We used the walkie-talkie all the time during this video shoot, especially with all the drone scenes. Dad always had to stay far away in order not to be visible in any of the drone shots 🙂 It worked really well.

We’re working on a little behind-the-scenes video for the Club, so hopefully we get to show you a bit more of the workflow soon.

The John Sebastian shots were done in front of a white screen, but with a little bit of video editing magic we put him right there in the desert with us 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

No, the kid just enjoyed a bit of guitar window shopping that day 😉 I’m already spoilt rotten when it comes to guitars, so definitely no complaints here.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi David,
Thanks for letting us know. We were able to fix that right away and sincerely apologize for any inconveniences caused!

[Rudolf Wagner]

We try to make the message and music of an album flow nicely. What does “flow” mean? We aren’t quite sure ourselves but we know when it doesn’t. 😉

It’s a bit similar to a live show – we probably wouldn’t play a soft ballad, a heavy rock’n’roll song and then a quiet acoustic number consecutively unless there is a conceptual reason to do so, within the message and structure of the songs.

As much as we primarily write in individual songs rather than concept albums we still always have an overarching idea in mind, a story and mindset that ties it all together. So sometimes that requires songs to be in a certain order.

With ORANGE, for example, we always knew we wanted to end with Still A Friend Of Mine so we worked backwards from there. We created “The Future” as an intro to open the doors to an orange experience …

Have a nice evening and thanks for asking 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Paul!

A lot of different things factor into which songs we choose to cover, but number one, the song has to connect to us at some level. Meaning that by playing it we can do more than merely repeat the words and melodies written by someone else.

We always pick something that inspires us and that we get excited about; musically, lyrically, conceptually or all three of those things! 🙂

Sometimes we have a good video idea for a particular song in mind, too. Or it could be that we’re travelling somewhere that has a connection to a particular song we like. Or that we’d like to try something we’ve never done before, songs that intrigue or move us.

We still have a very long list of songs we’d like to give a go one day, and a lot of (to us) influential bands that we’d love to pay homage to by playing one of their tunes. And of course, there are still 300+ more Beatles songs … 300+ more of our favourite songs 😉

“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” has been on that list for a long time by the way – we love that song. It’s really tempting to have a go at some CSN one day – those harmonies are to die for! If only there were 8, no better 9, 10, 11 days a week 🙂

Thanks for the question!

[Rudolf Wagner]

First of all, Thank You!!
Hmmm, not an easy question. We’ve always been interested in a million things so it’s hard to imagine what hobby/potential career each of us would have pursued if music was out of the question.

When we were really young we were crazy about animals and horses, for example. If music wasn’t an option then, we might have devoted more time to that interest.

Later on in life, art, graphic design and photography got really interesting. So if you’d told 13 year old me I had to burn my guitar, maybe I would be a designer now (which of course is a hypothetical question as I would have plotted murder against anyone who told me to put down my guitar :-P)

So if I suddenly lost my voice, became deaf and dumb and forgot all musical abilities, I’d probably be drawn more towards visual art, or maybe something to do with health or fitness, or filmmaking …

… Gosh, I don’t know and I’m ridiculously glad that I don’t HAVE to think about that. Not having a plan B insures that you’ll work your butt off for plan A 😉

[Rudolf Wagner]

Looks like nobody could comment because the anti-Spam plugin was a bit overzealous. It should work now. Can you try one more time?

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks for reporting. I take a look into that.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Roger,

Glad you decided to join us here, and as we can see you’ve already started making yourself at home 🙂 It’s lovely to see so many members welcome the newbies and we wanted to add to the “hellos”.

40-some years of playing and 30 guitars! Wow, I bet you and many of your guitars hold great stories.

Both, the EJ160 and 200 are two of my most played acoustic guitars and have accompanied us to countless gigs and radio performances.Two true work horses 😉 As many here already said – please feel free to share some pictures! We’d love to see them!

Also – late Happy Birthday! If you’d have let us known a couple of days in advance we would have prepared a little something for you. But keep an eye on your inbox, it might not be too late yet 😉

Au revoir, je m’appelle Mona (sorry, that’s all I know!) and stay groovy!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Paul!

We’re very sorry that we didn’t reply to this sooner – Welcome to the MLT Club! We very much hope you enjoyed your first month here, it’s been a busy one for us with lots of new music … there’s more in the making already 😉

So many people here seem to be musicians themselves or have worked in the field of music which we think is great, so we’re sure you’ll find some like minded people.

Groovy greetings and a big “Hi” from Lisa, Dad and Michaela too,
Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi John!

What a touching “hello” message, thanks a lot for joining, for saying hi and for your words. We hope you’ve been enjoying yourself here so far.

Definitely let us know when your blog/YouTube channel is up and running, we’re looking forward to learning something new about Liverpool!

We hope you’re going to have a great time in the Club and whenever you’ve got a question, feel free to post it in the “Ask the MonaLisa Twins” forum.

Cheerio 🙂