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Polly O’Keary & Rhythm Method
August 25, 2023 @ 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Free
She learned to read music by kerosene lamp in a log cabin in a remote part of Washington State. She started playing in ex-pat bars in Mexico at 16, and Eastern Washington watering holes for rural farm workers at the age of 17. She dropped out of school with an 8th grade education, married a prison-bound man at the age of 18 and by the time she was 21 had logged more stage hours than most musicians twice her age. She’d drunk as much as a fair number of them as well.
At 28, upon seeing Jeff Healey at a friend’s bar in Canada, she became obsessed with blues, studying and practicing the genre until carpel tunnel syndrome temporarily rendered her hands nearly immobile, and she quickly came to the attention of the Pacific Northwest blues scene with her powerful and emotional voice and her frenetic stage presence.
Today, she’s a PhD student, a world-traveled bassist, one of Washington State’s most highly-awarded female blues singers and songwriters (six-time Washington Blues Society Best Female Vocalist, six-time Best Blues Songwriter, etc.), doesn’t drink at all, and no longer visits lovers in prisons. But her music reflects the life of a modern blues woman; she’s seen the river rise and take everything more than once, and lived to laugh, sing, and write music about it.
Polly O’Keary is today’s blues woman, rooted in tradition, but informed by the 21st Century. Pulling in influences from zydeco, country, funk, jazz, rockabilly, surf and rock and roll, she and her trio, Polly O’Keary and the Rhythm Method, bring a searing and joyful performance of today’s blues to audiences across the U.S. and Canada.
Polly O’Keary and the Rhythm Method is the trio she built with her husband and drummer Tommy Cook, also a highly sought touring drummer and three-time winner of the Washington Blues Society Blues Drummer award, with whom she shared rhythm section duties for international touring act Too Slim and the Taildraggers for four years.
Together, the band has done 10 national tours, released four critically acclaimed albums; been nominated for three Independent Blues Music awards including Band of the Year, Album of the Year and Song of the Year; won Blues Band of the Year from the LA Music Critic; been a top five finalist in the International Blues Challenge Best Self-Produced CD contest; has had a #1 single on contemporary blues radio and a #4 album; charted on Living Blues, and received a total of 26 awards from the Washington Blues Society and the Inland Empire Blues Society, including Best Songwriter, Best Blues Guitar, Best Blues Drummer, Best Blues Vocalist, and Best Blues Bass, among others.