[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Greg!

Phew, that’s a good question. Girls, ladies, women, guys, twins, … to be honest, they’re all fine with us.

It always depends on the way these words are being used and in what context. “Girls” can be said in a patronising or belittling way but so can more “formal” terms. 99% of times it is said in a loving, respectful way.

In high school we used to dislike being referred to as “the twins” as we didn’t always want to be talked about as one unit instead of as individual people. But of course that would be silly now as we are the MonaLisa Twins online and wouldn’t expect anyone to always refer to us as Mona and Lisa. 🙂

For us it is about intent and the way people talk rather than focusing on what words they use exactly.

That being said, being referred to as the “blonde” and “redhead” nearly always makes us cringe 😉

Take care ♥

[Lisa Wagner]

♥♥♥♥
Music, this Club and you guys help us in just the same way!

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Dale!
Especially for filming (shooting with an exposure time of 1/50th of a second) we often have to use polarising filters to darken the image if we want to shoot with a large aperture. Especially if we shoot outside. Other than that we don’t use any lens filters.

For photos we shoot a lot in .raw so there is so much you can still do/fix in Lightroom or Photoshop even if you didn’t get everything right in-camera.

Stay groovy,
Lisa

[Lisa Wagner]

Thanks, Brian! That is a regular set of good ol’ 10s.

I have gotten very used to them by now which I am happy about. They feel comfortable so they’re staying on 😉

Keep rocking and stay groovy!

[Lisa Wagner]

WELCOME TO THE CLUB, Rob!

Thanks for joining us! You will find that a lot of people here are musicians too, so if you ever want to talk about music or gear, you will find like-minded people in the forum 🙂

We thank you for supporting us on this journey and send the grooviest greetings to the Netherlands ♥

Mona & Lisa

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Howard!

“I was wondering if it is likely to be included in your current last Cavern Club performance videos being released to the Club.” – YEP! We only have 4 more songs to go before we reach “Mr Postman” which means it will definitely be up in the Club this year 🙂

It was a pretty recent addition to our setlist towards the end of our residency which made it extra exciting to perform.

So … a little patience please, we’ll get to it 😛

Have a great day!

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Dale,
I hope you don’t mind me referring you to this forum post where we were asked about potentially covering a Motown track: https://test4.monalisa-twins.com/forums/topic/motown/#post-33393

Motown has definitely been on our radar during our musical explorations from early on. Maybe not as much as other genres from the 60’s but the music has always been influential to us. One of the first concerts we’ve ever been to was James Brown (though he’s technically not Motown). It left us speechless and I couldn’t take my eyes off of the rhythm guitarist’s fingers. I’ve never seen chubbier fingers move around the fretboard quicker 🙂

And since you mentioned Gladys Knight, we saw her too, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles of all places. We caught her show during our trip to California in 2007, and it was wonderful. Even her backup singers were phenomenal.

There is a lot to explore in the world of Motown and I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface so far ♥

Motown

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Dave,
Greetings to Las Vegas! We visited your city during our first ever trip to the US in 2007. From what we remember it was great … and hot! We were only 13 at the time and weren’t allowed most places so it certainly wasn’t the typical Las Vegas experience but the impressive architecture and over-the-top-ness of the Strip definitely left an impression on us.
Thanks for joining the MLT Club, we really appreciate you being here! If you have any questions, please let us know or post them in the forum.

♥♥

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Kenneth,

It’s wonderful that you can relate this song to 6 special people in your life. That sounds like a life of wonder and adventure.

While the song was inspired by one person in particular we can also relate different lines to different people who have played important roles in our lives. So at this point, we like to keep the interpretation open and let the listeners take away from it whatever they want 🙂

Thanks ♥

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Jacki,
Different songs come with different challenges but “It’s Alright” from ORANGE definitely gave us a headache for a while. Not because it is a very complex song or because any part of it was particularly hard to play or sing, but because it took us quite a lot of tries until we found the right arrangement. Oh the amount of times we scrapped and re-recorded everything ?

We really like how it turned out but not unlike “Once Upon A Time”, we had to twist and turn and scramble it around for a bit until we were happy with it.

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi John,

It’s great that you bring up Emmit Rhodes. He has been brought to our attention with pretty much the same words you chose about 10 years ago. It’s a shame that he’s not better known considering how many people who are into melodic, 60’s pop music would appreciate his songwriting.

He has such a strong “McCartney-ish” sound in his arrangements, melodies, bass and vocals – sometimes he sounds more like Paul than Paul did in the 70’s 😉

We can relate to the DIY approach of his own music, too – that was quite the feat with the equipment available back then!

Anyway, thanks for reminding us of him again! Several people have mentioned him as an “insider’s tip” over the years so maybe it’s not quite as “insider” anymore – that would be great, he’d deserve it! 🙂

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi David,

John heard our music about a year prior to us starting working on Orange. He listened to some of our early originals and covers and expressed his interest in being involved in a future project. We were thrilled about the offer but it wasn’t until we started writing “Once Upon A Time” that we thought we found the perfect song for him to play on.

We did a rough demo recording and sent it over for him to record his blues harp parts in his studio in Woodstock. The song actually still changed drastically after that. In fact, “Once Upon A Time” started off a lot less psychedelic, with more of a back beat /merseybeat drive to it. It took some tweaking until we found the arrangement we were most happy with. John’s playing and phrasing was fantastic and we built more of the arrangement around his soaring harp lines.

We weren’t planning on having him play on another song but of course, when we wrote “Waiting For The Waiter” a few months later it was screaming for some more blues harp action 😉 So we sent him over another demo and asked if he would like to add his magic to it, too.

We didn’t set off writing either of the songs with him in mind but it became obvious very soon that they would both be perfect fits, so we left room for some harp. We gave him a very loose framework with room for interpretation for both, and he came up with the lines and riffs.

Hope you’re well and groovy!

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi John
in a perfect world, we would have time to film a video for all the ORANGE songs like we did for “When We’re Together”. We decided against doing that this time, so we’re able to move on to new original music and other projects quicker. If we can find a way to fit it in, we might still do some more ORANGE videos though. Songs like Club 27 would definitely be tempting! Thanks for letting us know that you’d be interested in seeing it 🙂
♥

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Ronald,

Welcome to the Club and thank you for the introduction and telling us about your life. It is always fascinating to learn a bit of everyone’s history here and the role (our) music plays in their lives. We are sure those years abroad left a big impression on you, and we are glad to have learned about something that is not so widely known.

Who knows, we might get around to recording  “Hey Jude” at some point. Our list of requests and potential cover songs is getting longer by the day but we always appreciate suggestions and as you know, we love to do Beatles covers 🙂

A big HELLO and THANKS for being here and supporting our journey,
Mona & Lisa

[Lisa Wagner]

Hi Robert,
Thank you so much for joining us here, for getting our music and for co-creating the MLT universe 🙂 We hope you’ll have a good time here!

To answer your question … “do you get any time to spend for yourselves?”
We love what we do, so despite not necessarily having a lot of “time off” from MLT related projects, to us this journey is 100% worth it.

All of us have our more personal outlets and hobbies which we follow to get some time for ourselves. At the moment Mona is super into gardening, I love photography and drawing, we both run a lot and enjoy getting out in nature. We get into all sorts of weird and wonderful things that inspire and recharge us.

Again, thanks for joining us here in the Club where we sometimes share more of the weird and wonderful things that aren’t strictly music related. Check out the Specials/Out & About Section in the Club 🙂

All the best,
Lisa