Mean Old Fireman

Mean Old Fireman, the musical brainchild of slide guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Ned Bollé, weaves ample doses of New Orleans grooves, southern rock and old school hard R&B onto a blues roots framework to create their own version of Americana. "Somewhere around age 11, I heard Derek and The Dominoes," Bollé explains, "and those first few notes Duane Allman plays on "Key To The Highway" galvanized me; I wanted to sound like that. That whetted my appetite, and then, like so many people do, I found my way back to the roots of it all - Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, those guys. The same thing happened with my love for New Orleans music, Robert Palmer led me to Lowell George, and that led me to the Meters, the Nevilles, Dr. John, and so on.” Their most recent album, Dumpster Fire, enjoyed a year-long run on Roots Music Report’s Blues-Rock Top 50 Album Chart, with radio stations across the US, Canada, UK and Europe keeping the record in regular rotation. But Mean Old Fireman goes beyond The Blues. “The concept of this band, at its core, is to layer in a lot of influences on a blues framework, that's why I consider it to be Americana. We’ll use an array of instruments - some traditional, some unexpected - to flavor our songs. When people hear us I want it to be a musical smorgasbord, not just one course."