Polly O’Keary has lived the Blues life.

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, Polly had logged more stage hours than most musicians twice her age. 

 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.

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 and the Rhythm Method is the trio she built with her husband and drummer Tommy Cook, with whom she shared rhythm section duties for international touring act Too Slim and the Taildraggers for four years.
 

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.