R. Stevie Moore’s outsider rock attracted a good number of folks to the White Water. Moore’s performance was a bit like listening to one of his more than 400 albums: awesome, then odd, then awesome again, then taking a hard left-turn into a stand-up routine that straddles the line between artful spoken-word recital and the word-salad ramblings of a psychotic ex used car salesman, then back to awesome again a couple more times and then it’s over.
With his wild gray mane and beard, mismatched flannel pajamas, flip-up shades and bellowing, thunderous singing, Moore’s stage presence was that of a lovingly irascible rock ’n’ roll grandpa who maybe got off his meds and into the whiskey.
The crowd thinned considerably when his backing band, Brooklyn’s Tropical Ooze, left him to wander the stage, strumming a guitar and delivering the aforementioned spoken-word act. But the band came back and so did the crowd. In his own way, Moore delivered a hell of a show.