'Shared' is an acoustic project set up by Miles Hunt and Erica Nockalls, of The Wonder Stuff alongside their management company.

The idea for the project came in 2008 when Miles and Erica visited their local public house, The Horseshoe Inn, Shropshire. Aside for catering for the drinking clientele, the pub's landlords - Mo and Bob Macaulley - held open-mic sessions on a Monday night which were open to all-comers, as well as hosting regular musical performances during the week.

Hunt and Nockalls began to show up at the open-mic nights on a regular basis and were amazed at the level of talent on display from the acts playing there. They were also surprised by the spirit of goodwill in which the (entirely unpaid) enterprise was undertaken. For Miles, stumbling across this scene was little short of an epiphany.  All the cynicism and ill-will of his previous existence was replaced by a burning desire to encourage and promote this new circle of musical friends, who quickly gathered around him like kids around the Pied Piper.

And so it was that they initiated the Shared project which was launched with a very special concert at the newly-refurbished Birmingham Town Hall in 2009. The idea of the show was to gather friends from the past, such as Wayne Hussey from the Mission, Nick Heyward from Haircut 100 and Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera, and put them on a stage with himself and some of the artists whom Hunt had more recently discovered at the Horseshoe.

Following the inaugural performance, Hunt began to look to develop the Shared brand further by way of album releases and further shows. The first fruits of this work came in the Summer of 2009 when The Horseshoe Inn held the album launch party for the inaugural Shared album, as well as an all-day festival featuring performances from many of the artists on the debut album. The event was a tremendous success, attracting around 500 to a venue out in the midst of the countryside with no public transport or even a mobile-phone signal. The acts performed on a makeshift stage on the back of a truck, parked on the far side of a little stream running along the edge of the car park.

The album won acclaim from many areas for its approach to showcasing new or lesser known British talents. Alongside tracks from Miles and Erica as well as Wayne Hussey, artists contributing to the album (released on IRL Records) included Dirty Ray (of Immaculate Fools), Timothy Parkes, Rob Dunsford and Matthew Derrick.

Outside of his work with the Wonder Stuff and his own acoustic career, Hunt has since gone on to work with a number of the acts already involved with Shared such as Dirty Ray Weatherall and Tim Parkes, alongside newer groups and artists he had come across at The Horseshoe Inn's open-mic sessions, producing a handful of albums for local acts. He has also featured some of these acts on support slots at his own live acoustics shows, as well as during some of The Wonder Stuff's own shows.

In September 2010, The Horseshoe Inn because another victim in the economic downturn affecting the country, but Miles and Erica have continued to work with local acts to keep the spirit of the open-mic sessions alive in recorded form.  The Horseshoe Inn has since been re-opened so hopefully the magic (and ale) will soon flow again once more...

At the start of 2011 work was completed on tracks for the second long-player this time featuring established acts such as Damien Dempsey, Ian Prowse (Amsterdam), Boo Hewerdine and Jim Bob (Carter USM) alongside newer acts such as Dan Donnelly, The Daughters, Smoke Feathers, Brent Lee.  The album went on-sale in May 2011 with an album launch party taking place at The Half Moon in Putney, London.