Roland Malines was born on september 14th,1953 in Marseille. Raised by a music lovers family, he, of course, is very soon attracted to music himself. Elevé au sein d'une famille de mélomanes, il est très tôt attiré par la musique. Dispite the very eclectic kinds of sounds his parents listened to - from classical to french accordion via flamenco, gypsy and jazz, not to mention elder brother Robert's rock & roll records - it's only when 14, when he discovered the blues, that he started teaching himself guitar. His favorites musiciens then are the likes of Johnny Winter or Rory Gallagher. It's 1967. Very soon, Roland will be attracted to discovering the roots of this music. He then buys 2 Lp's that are going to leave a deep print. One is a double LP, a compilation of some of the greatests pre-war bluesmen's songs. The other one, a compilation too, from some of the best artists recording for the Blue Horizon british label, evocatively intitled Super Duper Blues. That leads him to improve his guitar playing so much that it will make some young guitar players from Marseille very jealous.

Meeting Jean-Michel Caradec, just a neighbor first but quickly to become a friend, is going to play an important part in Roland's musical development. Actually, "Jami" pratices the finger-picking style with great talent. This is the very style that made Marcel Dadi famous. To Roland, it is a real revelation. In the meantime, he gets to hear the likes of Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrel, Joe Pass ou René Thomas, just to name a few. He achieves the entrance examition to the conservatory jazz class then managed by famous multi-instrumentist Guy Longnon and improves playing by taking lessons with a jazz his guitar professor. He has followed that path until the early 80's when he finally faced the facts : in every music he ever played or liked, there is a common denominator,the blues.Able to appreciate french blues artists such as Bill Deraime and Benoît Blue Boy as well as their american pairs, he goes through different more or less brieves bands to end up as Mojo Hand, an acoustic duo including excellent singer-guitar player Jeff Navennec. Roland too sings, he plays harmonica and takes a chance to improve his slide playing after he started playing finger-picking again. Although he had started writing his own material in the 70's, he more or less had abandonned this activity to better concentrate on the practice of his instrument. Now he seriously started writing again and has composed a french repertoire of his own to add to the blues standards he applied his own arrangements to, creating a sound all his indeed.