About
Tinderbox are an acoustic duo featuring Dublin born Monique Houraghan with a distinctive ‘honey-like’ vocal, and Dan Tucker with an intricate finger style guitar technique.
After meeting in North Yorkshire in 1997, Monique enticed Dan to return to her hometown of Dublin where they worked on writing and performing new material for the next four years.
Tinderbox then travelled the world for two years taking their sweet and mellow sound to countries such as America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Hong Kong, and Thailand.
After settling in Bournemouth in 2004 Tinderbox have performed a number of headline shows to capacity crowds. Additionally, they have played support sets for high profile acts including Cara Dillon, Jon Allen, Amy Wadge, Corinne West, Kris Drever, Ben’s Brother, Ralph McTell, Emily Maguire, Uiscedwr, Chris Difford and Megson.
In 2008 Tinderbox released their second studio album. ‘Golden’ was launched at Centre Stage in Bournemouth, with the band performing to a record-breaking audience. Maverick Magazine described ‘Golden’ as “Quite inspirational really…a masterpiece”. Acoustic Magazine labelled their music ‘Lovely, hooky and mellow’.
In April 2010 the duo launched their third studio album ‘The State of Play’ to a sell-out crowd. Guests who joined the duo on stage included folk guitar wizard Kevin Dempsey (Whippersnapper, Joe Broughton, Dave Swarbrick and Uiscedwr) as well as whole host of talent. BBC 6 Music’s Tom Robinson described the music as ‘Gorgeous’. Rock N Reel Magazine’s Dai Jeffries added “…tunes (that) stick in the memory from the start”, and Roger Day BBC Radio Kent said they reminded him of “an early Fairport Convention”.
In May 2010 Tinderbox returned from a hugely successful tour of the USA and went on to win an award for ‘ The Best European Group’ in Caceres, Spain.
They are due to release their fourth studio album ‘Counting Time’ in March this year. The ‘Counting Time’ UK tour commences at the end of March. Watch this space!
