District couple enjoys doing musical projects

By Sarah Pruys
FF Times Summer reporter

Willie and Rodi Longenecker are talented people. Not only do they sing worship songs, but they can do it while fishing on Lake of the Woods and being filmed for their first video DVD, “Calling Fishermen.”
The couple, who have lived in Morson since 1969, sat down to explain their passion.
“We have been singing for 20 years in nursing and retirement communities across the United States and Canada,” Willie Longenecker noted.
“We were up to about 200 places per year, but now we’re down to closer to 120 places,” he remarked.
“We do it fall, winter, and spring.”
In the summer, however, the couple spends time at home on the Big Grassy River, fishing and working on their musical projects.
“Our purpose is to share our life with the people that we’re singing to,” Longenecker reasoned.
“The songs that we’re singing are about the Lord, who we believe called fishermen,” he added.
“We were trying to incorporate all of our life here, including fishing; and songs of grace, songs of mercy, and songs about the Lord are songs that continue to call people, including fishermen,” Longenecker added.
“That’s how the title came to be,” he said. “We felt like it would summarize what we were trying to do.”
Longenecker explained how their projects evolved over the years.
“We had been doing slide song presentations, and gradually got into wildlife photography and people pictures that we used with certain songs,” he remarked.
“About eight years ago, we started putting it together digitally and we made a DVD.
“Now, we’ve made three of them with still photography and this is the first one with video.”
They also recorded eight CDs previously.
Longenecker said, “we’re singing to older people, so we sing a lot of older, familiar Gospel songs,” noted Longenecker, adding all of their projects “have been very well-received.
“We got quite a bit of coverage with the third one,” he noted. “We have it out in about 600-700 nursing and retirement homes.
“They’re used as sing-alongs; the words are on the pictures.
“So it has lent itself to being a worship tool, a way of involving people,” he added.
Their newest DVD, “Calling Fishermen,” just came out at the end of April, so they haven’t had a chance to promote it much yet.
But for those who have seen it, “some have gone so far as to say, ‘It’s really good, it’s great!’” said Longenecker.
“I think it turned out well,” he added.
“The artwork was done by a local artist Elvis Adams,” noted Longenecker. “He’s pretty famous in this area.
“I had [the design] in mind but he’s the one that actually did the work.
“[Lloyd and Steve Knight of Round Table Associates] that did it are very professional,” he added.
“I knew that they did video productions for some mission organizations, but I didn’t know they had worked in fishing videos for tackle companies and tourist camps.”
Having videographers with previous experience working on boats helped the process run smoothly and they were done filming the 72-minute production in four days.
“It’s not all out in the lake,” Longenecker stressed. “Part of it is in the care centre in Rainy River and part of it is at a birthday party at our house.”
Longenecker said they caught fish while singing.
“On the one song, Rodi hooked a really nice fish while we were singing ‘Wonderful Grace of Jesus,’” he recalled.
“I was able to hold it up for the cameras just as we were finishing the song.
“It was rather a gift, for sure,” he stressed. “You can’t make the fish bite.
“It was a bit difficult,” Longenecker conceded. “The recorded sound was in studio, so we were trying to sing ‘with’ ourselves.”
The couple decided to try and reach a larger audience by including fishing in their latest DVD, which includes 18 traditional worship songs and Longenecker’s own old-age rap entitled “The Final Shove into His Love.”
“It’s somewhat of an effort to reach out to people in nursing and retirement homes, but it’s also an effort to reach out to the average person,” he explained.
The couple’s DVDs and CDs can be purchased online at their website (graceagain.org) or at Emo Feed.