[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Mike,

We wish we could give a simple answer, as that would mean we‘ve figured out a workable recipe to follow. But to be honest it really has been different with each song so far. Sometimes the catch phrase came first, sometimes the overall groove, sometimes the topic we want to sing about, sometimes the melody, sometimes an interesting chord progression, sometimes a guitar riff and sometimes the words. I honestly can’t say that one of those happened a lot more than others. MAYBE we used the melody in combination with a few words that fit the vocal line as a starting point the most but we certainly tried out every other way too.

Refining and really finishing the words definitely is something that usually happens last.

Every song has its own feel and personality in a way that usually evolves during the recording process. Hardly ever do we go into a recording session with all instrument parts already figured out. I’d say 50% of the arrangement happens while we record and try out different ideas. One of the many advantages of recording at home and having a dad with years of studio experience 😉

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Rick,

That’s something we will add to the Club for sure. We’ve still got a bunch of drawings and doodles lying around that we need to photograph/scan but it’s definitely on the list on things to do for the Club this year. Lots of cool stuff from Mona too! It’s one of those things we‘d do a lot more of if we had the time but at least we have an excuse now if we get to share it here in the Club 😛

[Rudolf Wagner]

Interesting article that raises some good points. Some of which I personally agree with and some of which I don’t. While obviously there seem to be many people fascinated by these in-depth analyses, personally we don’t find ourselves going down these rabbit holes a lot. We’re more interested in the music they created and in what makes music great and beautiful rather than the personality/talent aspect behind successful bands and musicians or who was the bigger “genius”, though those discussion can be interesting.

The four of them undoubtedly had their unique things to bring to the table and the article depicts Paul’s strengths and their differences well. But as I said before, since I don’t think any of them came any close to the magic they created as the Beatles once they went solo (one of the points I disagree on with the author), I think it’s kinda obvious that the combination had much more of a role to play.

Paul wrote insanely beautiful melodies but I can’t think of more than a handful (if even) of his solo stuff that came even close to being in the same ballpark than what he did with the Beatles. Go figure.

What’s for sure is that unlike anyone else, together they left behind enough music, history, stories and aspects to their creative and personal lives on this planet to inspire and intrigue millions of people and many, many generations to come.

Thanks for sharing the article and your thoughts here. Best, Lisa

[Rudolf Wagner]

We love trying to incorporate new instruments and using different sounds in a tasteful way whenever it suits our vision for an arrangement. There are times when nothing beats the sound of a good old Rickenbacker played through a VOX amp or a properly mic’d nylon string guitar, but from time to time we try replacing those with some more unconventional instruments as you’ve mentioned.

On the last few covers we recorded quite a few “unusual” instruments like a washboard on “Baby Mine”, a flute on “I’ll Follow The Sun”, the Cello on “Yesterday” etc.

I’d say that on the ORANGE album we easily used twice the amount of instruments than we used on our debut album “When We’re Together” and we definitely want to continue venturing out into new territories exploring the endless variety of instruments us crazy humans have managed to invent over thousands of years. Or sometimes keep it super basic, it all depends on what each song asks for of course.

We are in the middle of recording a new cover too, which we rearranged with a slightly unusual instrumentation but we don’t want to spoil the surprise yet 😉

Thanks to one of our fans and supporters we actually own an autoharp (not a zither though) but we have not been able to use it yet since it unfortunately broke in transit. Maybe we’ll fix it up and use it for the new album! … first, we’ve got to write a song for it 😉

What was the movie you were watching? Was it “The Third Man” where Anton Karas plays his famous Harry Lime theme? 😉

Thank you for the lovely question!

Stay groovy,

Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks Howard, for this explanation. Yes that is the way to remove items from the cart. We are working on a solution so you can clear the whole cart at once with one click on a button but in the meantime this is the way to go.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Danke dir, Frank! Wir hoffen, du hattest ebenfalls einen super Rutsch und 11 angenehme erste Tage im neuen Jahr. Auf ein erfolgreiches 2019 und stay natürlich groovy 😉 !!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks for letting us know how much you enjoyed the Advent Calendar! It surely was a lot of work but we want the Club to be well worth joining and you all to have a great time 🙂 And it was honestly real fun to put together!

To answer your question. There are many pros and cons about living in Liverpool like there would be anywhere in the world. Obviously we’re not speaking about each and every person we’ve met here but in general we really like the humour and openness about the people here. If you ride the train, people chat with one another, people tend to be really polite and not take themselves too serious. Not as many grumpy, snobby waiters as in Vienna (though they know how to play one 😉 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCANQRkzKtY )

After playing Saturday nights for two years and fighting our way through the nightlife scene for every gig, that is something we got to dislike a little bit about the city. Not at all when we were on stage playing for what always was an amazing audience but the whole drinking and nightlife culture that surrounds the inner parts of the city. We don’t believe it to be much different to most cities in the UK, but Liverpool specifically attracts a lot of “Hen parties” and “Stag does” (aka British bachelor/ette parties) that for some reason seem to get out of hand quite often. So going home or out after a gig resembled more of wading through a battlefield 😉

But other than that, there isn’t much we could point out that we don’t like about the city as a city. It’s clean, fairly save, with a diverse music, art and entertainment scene (yep, we have checked out, played or at least visited most of the music venues around town), rich history, loads of galleries, museums, shops, restaurants and the like. It’s pretty, not too crowded and fairly spacious and green. Super happy here 🙂

And yes, of course we had Scouse before, We’ve been given the title of Scoustrians after all 😛

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Rick,
My Gretsch Duo Jet is still in perfectly good shape but I wanted to go for more of a smooth, jazzy sound so I picked the Country Gentleman that we’ve luckily owned for a while now (thanks to the one and only Steve from Miami 🙂 ). Now that you say it, I don’t think it has ever made it into any videos yet, but I played it on a few recordings and sometimes used it at band practise when going for different tones or to mix things up a bit. It sounds, plays and looks gorgeous. Wouldn’t trade it for my Duo Jet as an all-round live performance weapon but it’s fantastic to have in the studio.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Martin,

A big Hello from all of us, thanks for saying hi and for joining the Club! It’s always so good to finally hear from people who have been following what we do for a few years already! It’s time we get a chance to talk 🙂

Thanks for the kind words about ORANGE in particular! We are just about to start working on original album #3 so we are equally excited to see what comes next 😉

Have a lovely day,
Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thank you so much, Janne … ummm we mean Santa!

We loved the parcel and will work our way through the vinyl, DVDs and books over the weeks ahead! How thoughtful to send us such a “musical”, groovy Christmas parcel and we’re glad you wrote us so we can say our proper Thanks.

Truly appreciated! Big hugs,
Mona & Lisa

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Howard!

We can’t promise for sure but we’d certainly love to do something similar next year! As we’ve said before, we thoroughly enjoyed putting the Christmas calendar together and reading your comments every day, and as long as we find enough things to post – we don’t see why not 🙂

Both performances from that video (the one in the church and in school) were filmed in December 2001, just eleven days apart. Either the snowflake costumes accentuated our baby faces or we had a growth spurt in between 😉

Flying to Downunder – as amazing as that would be – is too costly and time consuming but we will make sure to take enough “time off” in the weeks ahead to get at least most of the song writing for the new album done. For now, we just send groovy greetings to Australia!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Gosh, Salzburg is such a gorgeous city! It’s about a 4 hours’ drive from where we lived. Our grandparents had a holiday house in a village in the county of Salzburg (it’s the name of both the county and the capital city) that we spent some time almost every Winter to go skiing in the surrounding mountains (see photos below). Salzburg is beautiful, and we have very fond memories of our daily activities out in the snow and tranquil hours lazing on the top of the tiled stove like cats.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Now that the Advent Calendar is done and the busy holidays are over we’ll have time to work on things like the chords booklet again. There are still a few other bits and pieces we want to get done in the weeks ahead but it’s definitely on the agenda for the not too distant future 🙂

Hope this will also result in some great covers from you guys!!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Charles,
The royalties we pay for our Beatles covers are the same as for covering any other artist and they aren’t more or less expensive, at least when it comes to CDs. There is a big difference of using songs on a TV show or movies though as royalties for film are a lot more complicated and expensive, and they are to be negotiated with the respective publishers. We don’t know if $10,000 for the Tonight Show is exaggerated but we wouldn’t be surprised by that number.

When it comes to the our liner notes for our original albums there is a lot less to say than with most other bands who have a lot more people involved like producers, arrangers, composers, lyricists, sound engineers, other musicians and the list goes on. As all our songs are all written, recorded, produced and published by ourselves (MonaLisa Twins/Woolgoose Records) there isn’t really much else to say other than … well, exactly that 😉
Orange: “© 2017 Original sound recording by Woolgoose Records. All songs wirtten and played by MonaLisa Twins featuring John Sebastian on blues harp on tracks 3 & 6”

However, whenever other musicians were playing on our recordings, we always list them as well as the venue where the song got recorded to give proper credits to everyone and for them to get their share of sales revenue.

Hope that answers your questions 🙂
Best,

Lisa

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Jacob!

Sorry for the late hello back!

A fellow twin AND fellow drummer – that’s awesome, welcome to the MLT Club! We hope you’ve made yourself at home already and thank you for joining and supporting us.

We’ve never been to Florida or the East Coast in general but would love to visit (and play) there one day. 😉

Groovy greetings,
Mona