Tinderbox hits the streets!
“Being our first time busking as part of the Fringe I had no idea what to expect. We hurriedly set our stands up, organised the music and got our instruments out. The weather was against us at this point as massive gusts of wind blew stands over and music everywhere. A challenging start as we stood in the cold with clothes pegs, sellotape and bags everywhere to help hold our music in place. But a crowd quickly appeared as if from nowhere and suddenly we were blasting out our first tune, ‘Bethany Lane’.
As we played on, more people began to join the crowd and we got through our set without too many hiccups. The 45 minutes flew past and we were getting ready to say goodbye to the Fringe for the day, and yet no one had come to kick us off the stage and the crowd were cheering for that good old ‘one more tune’. Suddenly the pressure of containing everything, including set up and take down, within our allotted time lifted and now we could have some proper fun. So it was time for some audience participation. Jack, Tinderbox creative director, summoned a crowd member to conduct some improvisation with the orchestra. Using some basic moves of ‘suggesture’ (a terrific set of hand signals developed by Mike Kearney) he had the orchestra blasting out some awesome grooves, chords and stabs which had the crowd amazed. This, accompanied by some more tunes and jamming, kept our audience entertained for just over two hours! It was incredible. We even had one of the orchestra members’ younger brother up to do some conducting, which he executed like a pro, and had the audience doing some funky Balkan dance moves.
It was an awesome night and ended up being a roaring success. Here’s to the next one!”
Have you got your tickets to the gig on the 24th yet? They’re available at