Brad McCool’s rugged good looks and wisp of a goatee make him look like a young and stylin’ Jimmie Vaughan — which is appropriate given his occupation. A player weaned on T-Bone Walker, Freddie King, and Magic Sam, McCool first picked up a guitar at the not-so-tender age of 20. He migrated to Houston four years later, and found himself sitting in with Milton Hopkins, Joe “Guitar” Hughes, and other Bayou City blues legends. By that time, there was no turning back for McCool, who in 1996 set about injecting some younger chemistry into the aging Houston blues scene alongside the likes of Mark May and Hadden Sayers. Still, some purists found it hard to grasp the idea of some scrawny white kid from the tiny northeast Texas hamlet of Athens sharing a stage with national heavyweights such as Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Jimmy Thackery, Tab Benoit, and Anson Funderburgh. McCool’s father, Don McCool (yes, that’s the true family name), also put in time as a serious musician, playing bass for various blues bands around Dallas (where he eventually fell in with the Vaughan camp) and Austin before moving back to his Athens birthplace. The younger McCool has some additional experience playing bass and piano, which he shows off to a limited extent on his 1997 debut, Big Time. Live at Mardi Gras came along in 2000.