Tuneweavers sing their final anthem

After 36 years of singing together, the Tuneweavers are disbanding after an executive committee vote based on a major decline in membership and inability to find a choral director.
“It was very disappointing in the end,” said Floyd Cloutier, a founding member of Tuneweavers. “But it had become a struggle to keep it going.
“It’s almost impossible to get younger, new people involved in anything these days. We find that we just didn’t have the numbers to keep it going.
“And the people we did have we are all getting older and little more fragile or frail. It’s kind of hard to do things we normally would have done.”
Robert and Fran Taylor founded the Tuneweavers, originally named the Shrimp & Oil City Chorus, on April 28, 1978. The barbershop chorus started with 30 men under the musical direction of Marlene Hendrix.
Hendrix, now deceased, was the choir director during that time at Morgan City High School.
“I always loved her technique,” said Carri Johnson, first among a group of females to join the Tuneweavers. “She could be stern and hard but fair. …
“She just wanted the best always and she found a way of getting it. She was awesome.”
Johnson was a former student choir member at Morgan City High School.
The Tuneweavers began a long tradition of presenting Christmas concerts at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in 1978. Following the concerts, the group, along with several school and church choirs, would perform at Lawrence Park gazebo for the Christmas in the Park event.
The event included sing-a-longs with the audience.
Limited by the barbershop genre of music, the group switched to a choral style of music. With Hendrix’s position as a choir director at Morgan City High and access to a lot of music, she provided more variety in song selection for the chorus, Cloutier said.
The men’s chorus enjoyed many good years until the oil bust of the 1980s. Membership declined as families moved out of Morgan City.
On the verge of failing with fewer than 10 men, Hendrix and Lee LeBlanc, a Tuneweavers accompanist, proposed opening the chorus to men and women in September 1984.
“I told Marlene, if we were going to keep the Tuneweavers going, we were going to have to ask women to join and just make it a full chorus instead of a men’s chorus,” LeBlanc said. “It was a good group of women that joined.”
The open membership change resulted in doubling the number of members. It allowed the Tuneweavers to continue offering music in the Morgan City area.
“It was awesome,” said Johnson. “All the women were well received.
“There was a group of us that joined all at the same time when they allowed us to join them.
“As far as all the men, there wasn’t one man that ever thought anything other than open arms welcoming all the women. If there were disgruntles, I never heard about it.”
With the addition of women group members, not only did the harmony change to four parts but also a transforming musical shift occurred within the group.
“When the women came, our performances were more like in church,” LeBlanc said. “It was a different kind of music.
“It gave the chorus a rebirth.”
Hendrix served as director until 2003. Afterward Arlin Peltier of Centerville became the director until his death.
Jennifer Grant-Dupuy then volunteered to be the chorus’ director until the present. Unfortunately, a disabling accident forced Grant-Dupuy to resign.
Accompanists throughout the years were Kevin Duhon, Candy Drury, Lee LeBlanc, Belinda Krieg, Sarah Todd, Linda Kidd, Arlin Peltier, Mary Lejeune and Adam Mayon.
Over the years, the Tuneweavers performed Christmas, Easter, and spring concerts at various locations in St. Mary Parish. In addition to performances at Tri-City area churches and American Legion Post 96, the group performed for civic organizations and festivals such as Knights of Columbus, Ladies Petroleum Club, Elks Club, Civitans, The Domino Players, Teche Theatre in Franklin, Madewood Plantation Arts Festival, and Arlington Plantation.
Numerous concerts were recorded for television broadcast.