[Mona Wagner]

Hi Don!

Thanks for all the kind, flattering words – it brought a smile to our face! 🙂

To answer your question: Daily practise is only part of our routine during some phases of our lives.

Some months of the year we play, jam and practise every day and then there are months we are so busy with other projects that we hardly touch the guitar other than to record with it. It really depends on what it is we are working on at any given time and how busy our lives are.

It definitely helps to focus on different areas of your playing, rather than trying to work on everything at once all the time. Following an (even lose) practise plan can be great and of course having a teacher that keeps you on track can work wonders too.

We usually practise on whatever guitar is lying around and aren’t very picky. Ideally, you would want to practise on a guitar with heavier strings to help build up that muscle strength (every other guitar will feel like heaven in comparison) but that’s not always fun, so if you have the luxury of being able to mix it up and play on different guitars, that can’t hurt!

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Leif,

We’re considering it but don’t want to make any promises yet in case we’ll have to change our mind for one reason or another. But we’ve definitely talked about it! 🙂

[Mona Wagner]

Hi John,

There are fun aspects to both studio/video work and live performances, and part of us definitely misses the interactive performing side of things.

However, you can’t always have both, and if we started to get a band together and start playing live again now, the new album would be delayed for another few months. So we are just tackling one project after the other right now, trying to make each as good as we can.

There will be a Christmas live stream at the end of the month (more info will be announced soon!) so hopefully that will make up for our lack of live performances a little bit 🙂

[Mona Wagner]

We haven’t! We have never visited France (other than its island “Corsica”) but would love to go to Paris one day and visit the Louvre! That would be quite a special meeting … and selfie 😉

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Jacki,

We sometimes joke that the best thing about having a twin sister is being able to share a wardrobe ????

But yes, there are also some items that belong to one of us that the other wouldn’t wear (unless it’s needed for a video, perhaps) like gifts or special clothes we are picky about.

Fun story: Lisa bought ME a green jumper last Christmas and I almost ever get to wear it because as soon as it gets out the washing she’s the one walking around with it! I have a feeling the “Christmas present” story was only a cover-up 😉 Maybe I should enforce my own rules better, haha!

For the most part, we are both able to enjoy an extended wardrobe selection …. What’s not to love! 😉

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Richard,

We’re definitely open to covering some more Who or Rolling Stones songs in the future! “Eminence Front” would give Lisa quite a workout on the lead guitar, that’s for sure 😉

At the moment we’re focussing on writing and recording the next album so covers have taken a bit of a back seat but we are sure they will be back!

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Pascal,

You’re right, not every song we’ve ever performed live has made it into a YouTube video. There could be many reasons!

Either we simply never properly captured it on video/recording (we only recorded and filmed some of our live shows) or we just never got around to editing and uploading it to YouTube.

Also, not every song we perform always turns out as well as we’d like it to and oftentimes we were simply too busy working on other projects to turn all our live performances into YouTube uploads.

We have covered SO many songs over the years, it’s almost impossible to upload them all 🙂

Hope you’re having a great week!

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Deidre,

The Ricky I play is actually a 350v63 which is basically the 325 but with a normal scale neck. But I have also played the short scale version and actually quite enjoyed it (it’s great for some pinky action on those rock’n’roll riffs).

I think if you have big hands the short scale could be a disadvantage but in most cases it could actually make things easier.

Have you tried one yet? What was your experience?

Stay groovy!

[Mona Wagner]

I agree with you, I also love listening to Lisa play lead guitar and she is much, much better than me! 😉 Every once in a while, if the song allows it, I’ll play lead just to keep it interesting (for us, and maybe also you) and to keep us on our toes.

For example, with our recent Duo Session for “I Should Have Known Better” we first decided that I should sing lead on it … which in turn meant that Lisa had to play blues harp … which then made us come to the decision that I should play lead so neither of us had too many things to focus on. The solo is simple enough and it just changed things up a bit.

For 90% of what we play it goes without saying that Lisa should play lead but sometimes we just like to mix things up. 🙂

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Tim!

When playing live there is always something that goes wrong and there are plenty of instances when equipment would fail. We once played a show in Liverpool where the whole right side of the PA would stop working halfway through the show, and we just had to keep playing like that for the remainder of the set. We’ve messed up songs, forgot lyrics, sneezed, sang with a cough, dropped picks, had instruments fail and strings snap.

Somehow, when you asked for the “worst experience” none of these things immediately came to mind though. These sorts of “problems” rarely make a show a bad experience, I’d go as far as to say they sometimes even add a bit of entertainment or personality to a show. 🙂

The “worst” ones that come to mind were the types of shows early on in our career where you play on some tucked-away stage in front of a handful of people with “the venue owner’s mate” doing the sound. The type where you had interacted with more people filling up your car’s tank at the petrol station on the way there than during the actual show. That type where 70% of the audience is made up by the members of whatever band was booked after you by an aspiring “promoter” who thought that creating a Facebook event for your gig was enough to draw a crowd. It’s all part of the journey and I’m laughing about it now, but they were dreadful at the time. I’m sure there isn’t a band that hasn’t experienced these sorts of gigs! 😉

We played plenty of such gigs early on but calling one out in particular would feel wrong! ;-).

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Diana!

We have to be honest – other than the name, we didn’t know a thing about Roger Miller before you sent those song links but they were a joy to watch, especially the live one!

The American stars of the mid-60s era had their own kind of charm, there is no doubt about that, even though it was so different to what was happening over in cheeky Britain. We’ll dig in a bit more and check out some of his albums!

Hope you’re doing great!

[Mona Wagner]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for saying hi! It’s lovely to finally “meet” you after your first couple of months here in the MLT Club. We appreciate your support! 🙂

It’s unfortunate that you missed us at the Cavern Club during your last UK trip, but we hope you’ll get another chance to see us live one day! We still don’t have any solid plans for when we’ll hit the stage again but if we ever set anything up the MLT Club members will be the very first to know!

Our dad actually graduated from aeronautical engineering school (he thought of becoming a pilot before he made the switch to building his own recording studio 🙂 ) so naturally we grew up with planes/aviation always being a big topic in our lives (here’s an example 😉). We are glad you retired at a time where things were still functioning, and are sure you must feel for your colleagues who are currently struggling! Thanks for sharing part of your story with us, sounds like you have led a very exciting life so far!

Thanks for being here and for being groovy,
Mona & Lisa

[Mona Wagner]

Hi John,

There isn’t a release date yet but rest assured that the MLT Club members will be the first to hear it once we are able to set one. Sorry to keep you waiting but things seem to always take a little longer than we initially anticipated. We want to make this record the best it can be so we don’t want to sacrifice anything for a quicker release. We’ll continue to pre-release a few more singles to the MT Club in the time to come though. 🙂

[Mona Wagner]

Hi John,

No need to thank us, we really enjoy answering everyone’s questions here as much as we can and like the discussions that spring up around our replies – that’s great to see 🙂

To answer your question:

When playing live we usually jammed a bit of “This Boy Is Mine” or the Beatles’ “This Boy” to warm up on stage and set the sound levels (Coincidentally 2 sounds with a very similar title – something I am only now noticing ????). We never really “agreed” on that, it sort of just became a tradition because between the two songs, we’d cover all instruments & vocal mics.

Before jumping into a studio recording session, we usually just do some light vocal exercises before recording any voices. Or simply sing/play through the song we’re working on a few times, so we’re all loosened up and ready to jump into the project. But there isn’t any real “protocol” or “ritual” we have. 🙂

Thanks!

[Mona Wagner]

That is very flattering, thanks Tim!

We don’t really choose our projects/profession based on what we think we would be necessarily “good” at though, if that makes any sense.

So, if we felt a desire to act or model we would follow that whether we thought we had “the looks” for it or not. If we ever wanted to get into film/movie work we would do it because we felt passionate about the specific film project or script, and it’s something we might still explore in the future.

Luckily, we have lots of opportunity to play around with visual ideas in our own music videos and vlog-type content, and we would much rather focus on that than use our time to work for other people or products that we don’t feel connected to.
That’s how we see it, anyway 🙂

We LOVE what we do and spend most hours of the day building our own vision and music. To do something else just so we get the most out of our physical appearance while we are still young would feel silly to us.

Thanks for the question though!