It’s hard not to like The Bourbon Dynasty‘s self-titled debut, even before having heard a note. I mean, it’s right there in the gatefold: “Vince McCool, trumpet.” If a band that enlists a trumpeter with a name like that isn’t a winner, I don’t know who is. He should have an 80’s cop show where he rock and rolls all night and solves crime every day.

The Bourbon Dynasty themselves don’t rock nearly as hard as the Vince McCool of my imaginings. Not that it’s a bad thing. In fact, the band tends to be at its best when they’re playing no-frills country or blue eyed soul straight out of 60’s AM radio, rather than the few real rockers sprinkled around the tracklist. And in that diversity, the record is a lot like D.C. weather: don’t like what’s going on right now? Wait a minute, a change is always right around the corner.

The band, a blending of journeyman local musicians with at least a half-dozen “formerly ofs” in their C.V., play with the loose energy of a bunch of guys who love what they’re doing, and that’s the record’s greatest strength, saving it on those occasions when songs veer too close to Jimmy Buffet-esque bar-band forgettability long enough to get to the more genuinely affecting country laments.