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Indie rock with ridiculously large saxophones.
Instruments from different genres, generations, and cultures Frankensteined together. 
Monsterboy LIVES is a husband-and-wife indie rock duo from Little Rock, Arkansas, made up of multi-instrumentalists Chris Long and Veronica Wirges. Known for their full-production two-person live shows featuring a 1923 five-foot Conn bass saxophone named Sweet Connie, they blend indie rock, blues, alternative, and unusual instrumentation with synchronized visuals.
Chris had been writing songs and fronting rock bands for years, but by the mid-2010s he was starting to wonder if he was finished. Ideas remained. The band did not. Starting over felt exhausting.

Veronica had been a classical musician who fell hard for the lower registers of the saxophone family — then put the instruments down for nearly twenty years. She stayed in music (managing, lighting, stages, costumes, creative direction) but she was no longer the one playing.
When Chris got stuck, Veronica’s advice was blunt:
Find someone who is nothing like you.

Different background. Different instruments. Different instincts. Someone who will actually challenge the songs.

They looked. They went to rounds. They listened.
Nothing quite clicked.
Except for the free tickets to Bonnaroo that somehow appeared.
That is where everything started moving.

Chris’s open-mic slot was canceled by a Portugal. The Man pop-up set, so he wandered into a camping area and played anyway. A writer from MTV who had attended the pop-up found him while walking back to her campsite. The article that followed changed the conversation. Suddenly people were talking about this husband-and-wife team she had met, and they started looking for a duo.
That led to an SXSW day party that specifically wanted the act from the MTV piece - and wanted female musicians on the bill. Veronica said yes, even though she hadn’t touched a saxophone in two decades and they had only eight weeks to dust off an old bari.

Something unexpected happened.
Chris had always heard a particular low instrument in his head, a countermelody he had spent years assuming was a cello. When Veronica played bari sax that night, he finally recognized the sound.
They made it onto the stage as a temporary alliance between a seasoned rock musician and a rusty classical musician. Veronica refused to let stage fright - or her fear of heights - cost him the opportunity.

After the show, Chris asked how she felt, worried it had been miserable.
She loved it.
In fact, she was sad it was over.
So he asked the only question that mattered:
Why don’t we just do this?

That was the real beginning.
Neither of them stayed the same.
Chris pulled Veronica into the world of co-writing and playing by ear. Veronica pushed Chris towards the possibility that an instrument could become almost anything inside a song.
Chris had nearly walked away from music entirely.
Veronica had already walked away from playing for two decades.

Then came Nashville, Bonnaroo, MTV, Austin, and eventually the pandemic, which pushed them even further in.

Duing the pandemic, night after night they livestreamed from home. The polish fell away and the real, unfiltered versions of themselves showed up. People loved it - at one point they were reaching 700 households a night.

Their listeners connected to different corners of what they were creating. Some came for the saxophone. Some came for the songs. Some came for the weirdness. Some simply recognized themselves in two people who kept choosing to make something that wasn’t logical, but beautiful.

That is why this exists.
Because they almost didn’t.
Because music came back when neither of them was sure it would.
And because there are still songs they haven’t written and places they haven’t taken this yet.
And then there is Sweet Connie.
​
​Somewhere in that stretch, Veronica found a five-foot tall 1923 Conn bass saxophone that had been sitting neglected for years.
She named her Sweet Connie and made a quiet decision:
This one is going back to work.
A few days later, she wrote “Ain’t Worth a Dime.”
It felt like the instrument’s song. Something forgotten until somebody finally saw what it could do.
Sweet Connie has been on stage ever since.
Come find us in the weird corner.
​
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