3rd Annual

Grand Mesa Songwriter Festival
June 5th - 7th, 2026

Marc Douglas Berardo
Marc Douglas Berardo is a thought-provoking songwriter as well as a fancy wooden guitar player who uses humor and deft storytelling to rally an audience and lead them into a deep and sometimes spiritual experience. After over 35 years of performing in every conceivable situation and winning awards and recognition for his songs in a boatload of national festivals like Rocky Mountain Folks, Telluride, Kerrville New Folk, Suwanee and Wiildflower as well as being voted “best interview and live performance feature” on Sirius/ XM Satellite Radio show The Village, Berardo has established himself as the real deal. A “lifer” that No Depression Magazine called: “sincere, fluid, charming and above all gripping.”
Berardo’s highly regarded 2025 release “The Beauty of This Now” was recorded in Austin, Texas and produced by Texas legends Ron Flynt and Walt Wilkins. It was one of many highlights in a year that included Berardo as the subject of a feature story by Jan Tomay in the legendary Ink Magazine as well as, along with the fiery dobro player Abbie Gardner, a headline appearance at the 40th Tucson Folk Festival in Arizona.
John Apice of Americana Highways wrote: “There’s a seriousness to Marc’s compositions that’s not apparent in the slew of artists who seem to have a lot of nothing to say in an album’s worth of music…Marc is cut from the same cloth as James Taylor, early Elton John or maybe Mark Twain…”