Green Mountain Festival Series set for Saturday

By Josh O’Gorman STAFF WRITER – Published: November 19, 2009

CHESTER — With one performer returning from Hollywood and another on her way to Nashville, the Green Mountain Festival Series will showcase some of the area’s finest homegrown talent.

The show — starting at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Green Mountain Union High School — will feature music by Dylan Duncan, Ida Mae Specker, Brendon Thomas, and Matt and Kate Lorenz of Rusty Belle, as well as comedy from actor Sam Lloyd Jr.

“I’m very excited to be going back to the school,” said Lloyd, who attended Flood Brook Union School, graduated from GMUHS in 1981 and has gone on to a successful stage, film and television career. “It was a huge time in my life and it helped shape me as a person and as a performer.”

Lloyd was active in the high school’s drama program, performing in “Arsenic and Old Lace,” “Oliver!” and Moliere’s “The Learned Ladies,” which gave him an unexpected opportunity to hone his improvisational skills.

“The whole thing was in rhyming couplet, and I delivered the wrong line and then I had to try and make it rhyme,” Lloyd recalled.

Lloyd will perform as “Tom Richmond,” a character he developed years ago at Weston Playhouse and who “took on a life of his own,” Lloyd said, including in pair of “Seinfeld” episodes in 1993 and 1994.

Also on the bill is Dylan Duncan, GMUHS class of 1999, who will perform songs he began writing in Chester in 2003.

“I’ve definitely been creative my whole life. As kids we made comic books and video games,” Duncan said of his childhood. “I think Chester has been good for artists because it’s so quiet. You’re 45 minutes from the nearest mall so you end up doing something creative instead.”

Duncan began playing guitar while attending art school in Florida and plays music influenced by his love of the bands U2 and Iron and Wine. He will be selling CDs of his song “Ask You,” inspired by his mother who died of amyloidosis in1997, with proceeds benefiting Boston University’s research into the disease.

Lloyd and Duncan have both left the area to seek their fame and fortune and soon Ida Mae Specker will do the same when she departs for Nashville to pursue a country music career.

The Andover native and Vermont Academy grad has been playing the fiddle with her father John Specker for 19 of her 22 years.

“I started playing when I was 3 years old.” said Specker, who also plays with her sister Lila Specker. “We play old-time Appalachian music. I love playing with my whole family. It gives us something to do besides eat.”

Specker said Saturday’s show, and another Nov. 29 at Andover Town Hall, will likely be her last before she departs for Nashville.

Saturday’s show begins at 6:30 p.m., but the public is invited to come at 5 p.m. for a Putney Pasta chicken Alfredo dinner to benefit a class trip to the Grand Canyon in April. Dinner is $8 for adults and $5 for children younger than 10.

Tickets for the show are $10 for adults and $7 for students when purchased in advance and $2 more at the door. For more information about the show, including a list of ticket outlets, visit www.greenmountainfestivalseries.com.

josh.ogorman@rutlandherald.com