Monsterboy

Monsterboy, a North Little Rock husband/wife duo (Veronica Wirges and Chris Long), is playing a virtual music festival, Left Bank Live, from 4 to 5 p.m. today.

The duo describes the site as “a collection of creatives from around the world coming together virtually to share their music, comedy and spoken word sessions with anyone that tunes in. We are looking to add more virtual festivals and virtual conventions to our roster…”

Why did Long decide to do this now?

“I was feeling pretty helpless, then a person messaged us last night on the stream how much they needed this. And that made me feel like I was helping people in our own little way. And I didn’t know until it happened, but that is what I needed.”

Join the festival at monsterboylives.com, scroll to bottom of home page and click “Live Stream.” - Arkansas Democrat Gazette

I had the chance to preview this song and it will definitely be a crowd favorite. The vocals are amazing and I love the sounds of that beautiful Sax from Veronica.

I can't say enough good things about Chris & Veronica. The young couple is talented, personable and definitely know how to entertain a crowd. I am so happy to find these new friends!

The Band has been in a development program headed by Ari Herstand since the beginning of the year. Herstand is known as "The Poster Child of DIY Music." The program has encouraged them to develop more YouTube content, thus inspiring an upcoming series of videos. Be sure and check out this Youtube Performance of "Just a Song" filmed at the Laman Library in North Little Rock.

This awesome song will be the next studio recording that will be released. After the release of "Just The Song" it will complete the "Roo Sessions." These songs were written around the couples trip to Bonnaroo, which began the journey for Monsterboy. MTV.com discovered the Band during an Open Mic Session during Bonnaroo. This duo has captivated audiences since.

The Band recently received the Sally A. Williams Artists Fund to help with continuing artist development.

“We are excited to be able to share a more raw and stripped down side to our music, in the next few months," says Chris Long.

Learn more about this great duo on their website: http://www.monsterboylives.com/epk.html

I will certainly keep you posted on any upcoming news and tour dates! I am excited to help be a part of their journey! - Sweet Yellow Cornbread

Like Dr. Frankenstein’s patchwork creation, a Monsterboy song is a collection of elements that shouldn’t work together - and yet by some strange alchemy, do. The alchemists are Chris Long and Veronica Wirges, husband and wife duo out of Little Rock, Arkansas. The chemistry between them lies at the heart of their performances, a musical love story that captivates their audiences.

The Monsterboy story is one where life seems to circle back to the same things until the right decisions are made for fate to follow its course. Veronica's mother tells a story about when Veronica was a small child, still in diapers, they went to a jazz festival. Veronica sat herself in front of a huge saxophone, completely fascinated by the sound and refused to leave until the band stopped playing. Ten years later, they went into a music store to pick an instrument for band class. Veronica lit up when she heard a baritone sax being played in another room, her mother was a little surprised to recognize the huge saxophone from a decade earlier. It would be another 2 years before Veronica would be playing her own bari sax. However, at 18 she put the horn away, frustrated that she couldn't wrap her mind around moving past the sheet music to improve and songwriting.


Chris got his start first with a violin at 6, as he was too small for the deeper sound he loved of the viola. At 8 he moved to guitar, cutting his teeth on Steve Vai and becoming the local child prodigy featured regularly at the Juanita's Blues Jams. He started building electronica songs with a game called MTV Music Generator on his Playstation, teaching himself composition by emulating and experimenting with the progressions he heard on MTV's Liquid Television; he spent countless hours crafting these 8-bit songs. In his teens Chris started a few bands, naturally falling into writing the parts of every instrument.

The couple tells a story of how they kept meeting and feeling a connection in different situations every few years, and after that first date finally happened they were inseparable. One of the things that Chris loved about Veronica was how she always chased her dreams and made them a reality. What Veronica found captivating in Chris is how he always had unwritten music playing in his head. It was fascinating for her, and one of her favorite things was to hear him record each instrument one at a time on his shoebox recorder, layering each part to create a full song. She never brought up her years of playing sheet music on saxophone as it was in the past. They married 2 years later and focused on their education and then opening a small business.

Music was a passionate hobby at this point. With Chris being a guitarist, there were always band members in their lives. Veronica stepped in and helped Chris by handling the business side of his projects, so he could put more into the creative aspect. Eventually, this grew into Veronica handling stage production, lighting, and prop design. As bands do, they fell apart as everyone had different paths they needed to follow in life, and after over a decade of building a project with regional success - watching the music go away broke their hearts. This is when they tried to walk away from music completely, and put their undivided focus on their salon.

Fate, however, wasn't having it. After winning tickets to Bonnaroo a few months later, they found themselves, through a series of unlikely events, in the right place and the right time to be discovered and interviewed by a writer for MTV.com. Chris came back with half an album written, and that was the start of Monsterboy as a solo project. The only odd part was the story was written about a husband and wife team vying for a spot in the pop market. The couple was a bit confused as Chris was a solo artist and he had always done something in the rock genre but were just happy to have gotten to break. Eight months later, Veronica was booking a gig in Austin during SXSW, but there was a small misunderstanding. The promoter made room for the act, as he loved female musicians. Not wanting to give up the opportunity, the couple decided to add the baritone saxophone to the songs for the live performance in Austin.

Chris was a bit surprised to hear that his wife played saxophone and even more surprised there was a horn just sitting upstairs in storage. The couple had just 6 weeks to have the horn re-padded, Veronica to relearn how to play, and Chris to write the horn parts for the songs. The night before their first Austin show, during the final practice, Veronica wrote a new part to "We're Just the Same". Those first two shows landed connections with NPR, Facebook, and countless other people from all over the globe. That is the magic of Austin during SXSW. The couple found that people fell in love with Veronica and that huge saxophone on stage, the energy of the couple on stage was electric, and Monsterboy as a duo was solidified. Veronica brought her love of African tribal music along with her understanding of classical instrumentation to the project, which pulled the music more pop in nature.


Taking multifaceted creatives like Prince and Beck as their inspiration, the couple loves to explore the breadth of their combined skills. They also create custom video and visuals, reinforcing the mood and adding visual interest to their live shows. Songs are composed in the studio, often using classical or tribal instruments in non-traditional pairings, then built by layering vocals and sounds both organic and electronic. Unconcerned with genre, Monsterboy marries indie pop with elements of alternative, folk, and grunge to match whatever vibe the song demands. Even the duo's covers are reworked to feature Veronica’s iconic bari sax and blended with an array of unlikely influences, turning familiar crowd favorites into fresh experiences. And like Frankenstein’s famous Monster, when the diverse parts of a Monsterboy song come together, they come alive in unexpected and electrifying fashion.

Monsterboy is seeing increasing attention from music industry press, with releases appearing on KABF, NPR, and 100.3 the Edge in the Central Arkansas markets, and a recent premiere on Shoog Radio. Monsterboy has also been selected for an upcoming feature on ReverbNation’s homepage and has had four songs chosen for review by senior curators for artist development programs, festival performances, and sync opportunities. The couple also enjoyed a recent live interview and performance on the state-wide ABC TV show, Good Morning Arkansas. They have worked with local, regional, and international organizations including the Arkansas Arts Council, Artist Inc., and Musician Cell Groups to refine their skills.

Being a duo gives this power couple extra versatility in live performances. Their acoustic set provides an intimate vibe for coffee shops, college campuses, and house shows. Larger stages at venues and festivals give both musicians the chance to showcase their multi-instrumental skills. Monsterboy has supported acts such as GGOOLLDD, Wild Moccasins, and Vesperteen; and has featured during festivals like SXSW and Solar Flux. They look forward to touring regionally in 2019 and plan to take the act further afield with their first international tour in 2020.

Meanwhile, they continue to release a single every few weeks in a waterfall of music that gives fans the opportunity to experience the full range of Monsterboy’s creativity. - Lifoti

There was a time about a year ago when husband and wife Chris Long and Veronica Wirges of North Little Rock were on the verge of giving up their dreams of making music.

"We had been in other projects and when those fell apart, we were really questioning whether we wanted to do this whole music thing anymore," says the 39-year-old Wirges.

The couple had been traveling to Nashville in hopes of making music industry connections, and it was on what was supposed to be their final trip there that they ended up with tickets to the annual Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

Long performed on a small stage at the festival and he and Wirges later were passing out copies of their CD when a reporter for MTV.com asked to interview them.

In all, it was a fruitful trip that reinvigorated the pair, who have been married for 13 years.

"I was very inspired," the 34-year-old Long says. "I came home with about half an album written."

Recording under the name Monsterboy, Long and Wirges are starting to release some of their dance-inspired, electro pop. Their first single, the fiercely catchy, radio friendly "My Heart," drops tonight in the middle of a performance at Rebel Kettle Brewing in Little Rock.

"We've set it up so that the single will be released at 7 p.m., and we're going to do a live countdown," Long says. The track will be available at iTunes, Spotify and other streaming outlets.

North Little Rock's Monsterboy streaming live ‘music fest’ today
"It just makes more sense fiscally to produce it and then release it online," Long says.

Wirges adds, "It also allows us to release music at faster increments. We don't have to wait until a whole album is done, or wait until we've done a Kickstarter campaign to fund the recording of an album."

"My Heart" is the first in a series of coming singles, Wirges says: "We will have three new songs released three weeks apart from each other."

The initial tracks came from their experiences in Nashville.

"We got to meet movers and shakers, and the everyday Joe who moved there from all over the United States and the world," says Wirges, who plays baritone and tenor saxophone. "We met people from England who moved there just to try to make it in the music industry."

Long, whose vocals have a soulful quality, plays guitar, sings and produces backing tracks that the duo uses when performing. He also records and engineers Monsterboy tracks in his home studio.

Devin Castle of Hot Springs handles post-production work, Long says: "He does the mixing and the mastering. He brings the right sound to what we do."

Monsterboy is the first project in which Long and Wirges are actually performing as a duo, and there are no plans to expand their lineup.

"We're not eager to add anything else to the mix at this point," Wirges says. "Audiences are loving it, we're having a blast and every show has been so much fun. Why fix something that's not broken, right?" - Arkansas Democrat Gazette