Mike Bella is our area’s own version of Dale Watson, a traditional country singer who is known and awarded for his music overseas while still largely unknown stateside.  Both are too country and too independent to make major radio airplay in the U. S., but Europe in particular embraces them.  Bella’s fans both in and out of the U. S. will no doubt enjoy his latest release Lost in the Shuffle on the 5 Star Entertainment label. Strongly influenced by the Bakersfield sound and Buck Owens in particular, Bella will not be mistaken for, say, Kenny Chesney anytime soon.  Twang and steel and fiddle abound on this record, like its predecessor Forever and Ever.  The Logan County native has won numerous European country music awards and tours overseas consistently. Lost in the Shuffle was recorded at the Mission and mastered at Starplex Sound.  The musicians include Jim Brown (piano, acoustic guitar), Hoot Hester (fiddle), Steve Hinson (steel guitar), Kerry Marx (electric guitar), Greg Herrington (drums), and David Smith (bass).  Background vocals were by Mike Bella, Ken Isham, Barbie Isham, and Adam Tilford. Leading off with a Wynn Stewart/Tommy Collins song “I Won’t Live That Long,” Bella shows off his classic phrasing and bold yet warm voice.  The 12-song disc takes a large number of its songs, like “I Won’t Live That Long,” from classic country artist/writers.  Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever” fits Bella to a T.  Bella puts a shuffle on Buck Owens’ “Over and Over” and also puts his spin on Buck’s “Love’s Gonna Live Here.”  Bella reaches back to Flatt & Scruggs for their “Give Me Flowers” and to the ‘80s for Dan Seals’ “Wild Side of Me.” Bella picked new songs that fit in just fine with the older ones he covered.  Best examples are the two Slugger Morrissette penned songs – the infectious “Love Lives On” and “Might As Well Stayed at Home” where Bella laments the new features at his old watering hole in classic country language -- and “What We Don’t Have,” an appearances-are-deceiving song co-written by Billy Yates that would have been a good Alan Jackson track.  Title track “Lost in the Shuffle” by Barbie Isham and Monty Holmes is a great dance tempo track about, well, letting two hearts go while dancing. Bella is currently touring in Australia March 2-14 beginning in Melbourne and ending in Brisbane.  He has dates in Europe between May and August, including Switzerland, Germany, Holland, France, Norway, and Sweden.  So right now Lost in the Shuffle is one’s best chance to listen to Bella’s straight country music.  The disc is available for $10 at Bella’s website.

The Amplifier
Don Thomason
March 2006

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This marks the fourth album release by Mike Bella, and he is a Dynamite hardcore country singer, relying on the “Bakersfield Sound” and seems especially influenced by the music of Buck Owens…. In fact he covers several of Buck’s songs here with versions of  Loves Gonna Live Here, Over And Over and the gospel effort When Jesus Calls All His Children In. The entire album is basically a “cover” Treat, with Mike Bella delivering really strong versions of Wynn Stewart hurtin’ tune  I Won’t Live That Long; Merle Haggard’s White Line Fever  the Dan Seals 1984 top 10 hit (You Bring Out) Wild Side Of Me; the title cut Lost In The Shuffle, cut previously by Monty Holmes; And the classic country/gospel tune Bring Me Flowers(While I’m Living) popularized by Flatt & Scruggs.
There are also several new tunes here that stand out. Love Lives On  and the honky tonk nugget Might As Well Stayed At Home, both coming from the pen of Slugger Morrissette, are worth the price of admission on there own.
Mike Bella seems to be a huge favorite on the European Charts, and tours overseas on a steady basis…. Maybe country radio on this side of the big pond should let country fans in on some of Bella’s Magic. Lost In The Shuffle is nothing short of a ‘Great Album’!!

Country Music News in Canada
Larry Delaney
February 2006

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Mike Bella
"Lost in the Shuffle"
Five Star Entertainment 2005

Oh, yeah, this is a good ‘un. Hardcore honkytonk is in safe care and splendid voice with Mike Bella. Lost in the Shuffle is just where you’re going to want to lose your way if you love the hard stuff. It occasions pleasure from beginning almost to end. It makes one wish – let’s upgrade that to hope – that hard-core honkytonk music is on its way to becoming an enduring genre like bluegrass, surviving and thriving even without life support from mainstream radio. If, in fact, Bella were a bluegrass artist, he’d be a Karl Shiflett or a Larry Cordle.
Bella looks like a hat act, but he sounds like one only on the last, forgettable cut, with the bombastic, pumped-up electric guitar and hackneyed theme (“Country Nights”) that render country-hits radio a vision of aural hell to many of us. Perhaps Bella was persuaded that he needed a single that might make it there. If so, the man was considerate about it; it’s the last cut.
But there is so much satisfaction delivered on the rest of the tracks that I fear I sound like an ingrate. Bella sings in front of a swinging band entirely in step with his vision of hillbilly heaven. Not himself a songwriter, he is a man of exemplary taste in other composers’ work. There’s a debt – though not an overwhelming one -- to Buck Owens in his vocals, and there are two songs from Owens’s catalogue. But that’s okay. Supremely confident, Bella puts his own brand on them. He’s good enough to tackle Merle Haggard’s “White Line Fever” and not force you to draw comparisons to the Hag’s classic version. A particular stunner is “Wild Side of Me,” recorded in the 1980s by the forgotten and criminally underrated Dan Seals. Bella, who produces, shows his sure hand at nearly every turn.
Other stand-outs include Flatt & Scruggs’s “Give Me Flowers” and Slugger Morrissette/Gary Jones’s splendidly morose “Might As Well Stayed at Home.” Bella proves that honkytonk’s booze and blues live on, in all their woozy and heartbroken glory.

Jerome Clark
www.twangcast.com
November 2005

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He may live in Nashville but Mike Bella’s country heart is on the West Coast. His heroes are music giants such as Wynn Stewart, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, particularly Owens who has obviously been heavily influential on Bella’s vocal style. This is evident when he covers a Buck tune, such as Love’s Gonna Live Here, and the lesser known Owens songs, Over And Over and When Jesus Calls All his children In, all on this latest excellent CD, Lost In The Shuffle.
There’s a tasteful cut of Flatt & Scruggs’ Give Me Flowers, with Hoot Hester adding appropriate mandolin licks to his usual, masterful fiddle playing. Two of the countriest writers in Nashville, Billy Yates and Jerry Salley, provide Bella with a splendid shuffle in What We Don’t Have, while I Won’t Live That Long recalls two great writer-performers of yesteryear, Wynn Stewart and Tommy Collins.
This is the fourth Mike Bella cd to land on the mat at CMP Towers and, as expected, there’s no change in direction. Lost In The Shuffle is the perfect album title for a man who so obviously lives for Honky Tonk music. That he does it so well is good news for all traditional country music fans.

Review from Country Jukebox in Germany
(English translation coming soon!)

Lost In The Shuffle – was für ein treffender Albumtitel: wie ein Weckruf für die Country Music, sich auf ihre wahren Wurzeln und Traditionen zu besinnen und Mike Bella gibt auf seiner jüngsten Einspielung die Richtung vor – zeigt, wie sich die echte Country Music seiner Meinung nach anfühlen und anhören soll bestimmt wird das von ihm selbst produzierte und mit Unterstützung von solchen Könnern wie Jim Brown (piano, acoustic guitar), Greg Herrington (drums), Steve Hinson (steel guitar), Kerry Marx (electric guitar), David Smith (bass guitar) und Hoot Hester (fiddle, mandolin) eingespielte Album von einem durchgängigen 60’s Honky Tonk-Feeling, bei dem Twang und Bakersfield-Sound im Vordergrund stehen kein Wunder, denn Bella hatte schon immer eine Vorliebe für die Songs von Country-Legenden wie Merle Haggard, Wynn Stewart, Mel Street, George Jones und vor allem Buck Owens, von dem er sich in seiner musikalischen Entwicklung maßgeblich beeinflussen ließüber Vergleiche mit dem einstigen Country-Superstar ist der Sänger und Songschreiber deshalb auch nicht traurig – ganz im Gegenteil, seit ihm ein Kritiker zu Beginn seiner Karriere die unüberhörbare Nähe zu Buck Owens bescheinigte, fühlt sich Mike bestätigt und auf dem richtigen Weg Lost In The Shuffle ist der pure Genuss für für alle Liebhaber unverfälschter, reiner Country Music – ein absolutes Fest für die Traditionalisten wer noch eine zusätzliche Bestätigung braucht, der sollte Mal ein Blick auf die Liste der Autoren werfen, die es mit ihren Kompositionen auf Bella’s neuestes Album schafften Merle Haggard, Wynn Stewart, Tommy Collins, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, Red Simpson gehören dazu, aber auch Dan Seals, Roger Springer, Billy Yates und natürlich Buck Owens in Sachen „pure Country Music“ liefert Mike Bella mit dieser Scheibe mit Sicherheit eines der Highlights des Jahres, auch wenn man das naturgemäß in Nashville wieder einmal ganz anders sehen wird