Folk music icon takes Kents Hill stage Thursday

November 17 Director of performing arts center recalls seeing Arlo Guthrie performance in 1967

By Mechele Cooper Writer

KENTS HILL — George Dunn has only one thing to say to Arlo Guthrie when he meets with him after the concert Thursday.

"I was there in ’67."

Guthrie, the legendary singer/songwriter, is scheduled to perform at Kents Hill School’s Performing Arts Center at Newton Hall.

Dunn, director of the performing arts center, said he remembered when Guthrie sang "Alice’s Restaurant" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967 as Guthrie’s career was exploding.

"I was 17 years old and had gone to the festival with friends," the 60-year-old Dunn said Tuesday. "We all walked out of that concert that night singing ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ and ‘The Motorcycle Song.’ they played (‘Alice’s Restaurant’) on a radio station in New York and it got really popular. (Guthrie) got booked for the folk festival and he was a hit."

"Alice’s Restaurant" went on to become a movie in 1969, in which Guthrie played a starring role.

Dunn, who lived in Barrington, R.I., with his family in 1967, said he still has the recording of the festival.

He said "Alice’s Restaurant" is a real-life story of Guthrie’s teenage arrest for littering and subsequent confrontation with a Vietnam War draft board.

Dunn said Guthrie was arrested for littering on Thanksgiving Day in 1965. he was taken to court, where a blind judge resided over his case.

"the judge was blind, and the arresting officer had taken all these pictures," Dunn said. "the judge couldn’t see the pictures because he was blind, so he was given a $50 fine and told to go pick up trash. A year later, after being called up by the draft, he ended up being considered unfit for military service because of his criminal record. it was typical of the time. as he said in the song, he was classified as exempt from the draft in the Vietnam War, that never really was a war, to go in and burn and kill and do all kinds of warlike destruction."

After the folk festival, Dunn, who now lives in Kents Hill, traveled to Tanglewood in western Massachusetts to see the Who and then on to Woodstock with a bunch of his friends.

"We saw (The Who) Tuesday night at Tanglewood then drove back to Rhode Island on Thursday, and that night, left for Woodstock," he said. "(Guthrie) was there, he played Friday night, but I didn’t see him. We had a great spot. I even got on stage."

Jason Hersom, spokesman for Kents Hill, said this is the second concert in a series that supports the Aleigh Mills Scholarship Fund.

The scholarship is in memory of Mills, a 2006 Kents Hill graduate who was killed by a former classmate in 2007.

Guthrie’s "Journey On" concert is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $55 for general admission, $75 for VIP seating. Tickets are available through the Kents Hill School Development Office, online at kentshill.org/concertseries or by calling 685-4914.

Mechele Cooper — 623-3811, ext. 408

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Folk music icon takes Kents Hill stage Thursday

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