Polly brought her high energy blues to the Red Light Garage on
Friday and to our Main Stage on Saturday at our fourth Blues Festival in 2015,
and we are delighted to welcome her back as her career continues to explode.
From a beginning in immigrant camps through an early music career as a
teen working bars in Mexico and the US, to becoming one of the most
highly-awarded blues musicians in the Pacific Northwest, Polly O'Keary's life
in music eventually took her on tours as a bassist for national blues bands,
playing all over the United States and Canada, and a total of four continents.
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 winner of the 2017
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.
Rounding out the trio is David Miller, who at 25 assembled The Dave Miller Band,
and for the next 18 years, he and the group went on to become one of Southern
California's most popular blues bands, leading one reviewer to describe his
"jaw-dropping guitar licks" and praise his "extraordinary mixture of inspiring
virtuosity both vocally and instrumentally.
Today, Polly is a PhD student, a world-traveled bassist, and one of Washington State's
most highly-awarded female blues singers and songwriters (six-time Washington Blues
Society Best Female Vocalist, four-time Best Blues Songwriter, etc.).
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.
|