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Name: Belinda Hardesty
Member Since: July 2001
DMH Roles: Singer, some banjo, arranging, songwriting.
Hometown: Barberton, Ohio
Childhood Pet: A collie mix named Susie. I used to sing the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Suzie Q" to her when I was a kid. (She really liked CCR.)
My Favorite Self-Penned Original and Why I Wrote It: I wrote "Honeysuckle Dew" because the older I get, the more things I encounter that inspire memories, both good and bad.
Key Musical Influences: Elizabethan madrigals, Joni Mitchell, Weird Al Yankovic.
Dream Cover: "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.
Musician I'd Like to Trade Places With for a Day: Abigail Washburn
Favorite Gig Memory: We played a music fest at a nudist colony. I was worried about how the situation might impact our stagecraft (Where are you supposed to look when everyone for a mile is naked?), but the audience was so engaged, enthusiastic, and interactive that we forgot they were sitting there naked and just had an awesome time. Later everyone kept asking me with bated breath what it was like playing for a bunch of naked people. The only thing I could tell them was that it was really fun.
Favorite Quote: "For it is surely true, if not generally recognised, that real prowess in wrong-headedness, as in most other fields of human endeavour, presupposes considerable education, character, sophistication, knowledge, and will to succeed."—Ronald Hingley, and "Allllrrrrightly then."—Ace Ventura, Pet detective.
Top 10 Desert Island CDs:
Joni Mitchell, "Blue"
The Police, "Every Breath You Take"
Drowning Pool, "Sinner"
Gillian Welch, "Time (The Revelator)"
Johnny Cash, "American Recordings"
Anything by Ella Fitzgerald
Metallica, "Death Magnetic"
Stravinski, "The Firebird" and "Petrushka"
George Gershwin, "Rhapsody in Blue"
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 While Belinda Hardesty's musical experiences have been wide and varied, it's the old-time music that ultimately moves her soul. With her music degree, Belinda has performed medieval to jazz on everything from recorder to bari sax to voice. She's performed with the Akron Symphony Chorus, the Hiram College Madrigal Singers, and the Stow Chamber Symphony as well as numerous other choirs, orchestras, bands, chamber groups, and gospel choirs. While memories of these experiences still send chills down her spine, she finds the most fulfilment in music where the human story is told in it's most real terms. That's why she and DMH take pride in doing everything from gospel to death ballads all in the same show.
A self-proclaimed harmony junkie, Belinda gets joy both in arranging harmonies for the DMH crew to sing and in letting the harmonies find their own way in the crew's capable hands, just as nature intended. Not content to leave well enough alone, Belinda can now be found adding clawhammer banjo to the DMH mix.
The photographs on this page were taken by Brett Davis in the chapel and on the grounds of Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC.
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