Some artists pick up a guitar to chase a dream. Mike Shew picked it up to survive. Music had always been present in his life, but everything changed in the summer of 2025 when a life-altering loss forced him to confront grief he could no longer outrun. In that moment, songwriting stopped being a hobby and became a lifeline—a way to translate pain into purpose. “It saved my life,” he says simply. That experience forged not only his voice as an artist but the core philosophy behind everything he creates: honesty first, always.
Shew’s sound reflects that raw truth. Often described as “Bruce Springsteen meets Chris Stapleton,” his music lives somewhere between Americana grit, country soul, and heartland rock. It’s unpolished in the best way—earned rather than manufactured. His lyrics reach for something real: second chances, the long road to healing, the weight of love, the cost of loss. He doesn’t just sing about struggle; he sings about choosing to keep going anyway.
That choice sits at the heart of his debut album, Stay in the Fight. For Shew, those words aren’t a slogan—they’re survival. He has faced a series of blows that would silence most people: near-death experiences, financial hardship, and in 2022, the devastating loss of his first wife, Jaqueline Kay Shew, to COVID-19. Her memory lives inside every song he writes. “You don’t move on from that kind of love,” he says. “You carry it forward.”
And people feel it. His proudest moments aren’t streams or chart placements—they’re the messages from strangers who say his music helped them survive their own battles. Listeners who played his songs at funerals. People who chose recovery after hearing his lyrics. Mothers who thanked him for giving their sons something to hold onto. That connection led him to create Momentum with Mike Shew, a weekly radio show where he speaks openly about life, loss, and the stories behind his songs. No filters. No industry gloss. Just the truth.
Barely forty days after releasing Stay in the Fight, Shew has already turned toward his next chapter. His second album, Living in the Wrong Dream, is underway—a tribute to love, loss, and the realities of life after heartbreak. The title track, written back in 1992, has taken on a haunting new meaning after the passing of his wife. The song waited decades to find its purpose. So did Mike Shew. Now, he isn’t running from what he’s lived through—he’s writing it down and giving it away.
Because for Mike Shew, music isn’t about chasing hits. It’s about leaving proof: that grief can shape you, but it doesn’t have to break you. That love is worth the risk. And that no matter how heavy life gets, there is still a voice inside worth fighting for. And he’s not done singing yet.
