By: Blaise Schweitzer, Freeman staff
Kingston Freeman
February 8, 2002

Saturday, New World Home Cooking is offering a taste of a reinvented Jesse Moore, the Kerhonkson man who is leaving behind an acting career to perform as the leader of HooDoo Man and his Sweet Magnolia Band. The Mardi Gras Festival will be salted with plenty of New World's spicy cooking, as well as some area musical talent, as Moore sings a mix of Dr. John and Neville Brothers covers and his own original New Orleans-style blues and "funk fried gumbo."

That's HooDoo Man's description of his music, not of New World's food.

Interviewed last week at a High Falls restaurant, Moore picked an out-of-the-way table to sit at and ex plain his personal reinvention, why he's leaving behind an acting career and creating an onstage persona that is so very distant from that of the Accord property he calls home.

In the 1970s and 1980s Moore traveling all over the world while singing for the rock groups Prophecy and Black Fire, but in the 1990s he switched directions and won a host of acting roles that ranged from Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar to small roles on such television programs as "Law and Order."

And commercial after commercial.

Two years ago, Moore decided he'd had enough. Recalling an audition for a cell phone commercial that required he exhibit some odd split personality, he felt choked.

"I was just paying the bills," he said. "That was when I began to do a gut check."

So Moore gave in to his instincts, stopped pursuing acting roles and moved to Kerhonkson to focus more on the musical side of his personality. It was a return to the performer in him who sang with such stars as Bobby "Blue" Bland and Sam & Dave in his youth, and later with RCA Records' The Houserockers and the groups Black Fire and Prophecy as they toured Bali, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

Almost immediately, Moore said he felt better about his world and his song writing.

"The music just began to pour out of me," he said.

About this time, he was asked to participate in a reunion tour with "Prophecy," a tour that got him back into the studio recording, and back to thinking about performing, not just songwriting. After a few jam sessions and casual gigs at local venues, he found audiences identifying him as the character behind a new song he wrote "HooDoo Man."

He'd originally planned to sell the song to New Orleans' great Dr. John, when he wrote "HooDoo Man," but the more he performed it the more it felt natural to him.

"I've been a shaman since I was a child," he said. Describing a boyhood trip to a Cuban psychic at his mother's request, Moore waxed mysterious for a few moments, speaking of spirits, gris gris and mojo.

A former choirboy and altar boy, Moore's childhood was less arcane but it had its oddities. He was known for memorizing the entire Catholic mass, for example, and speaking it in Latin.

"I was a real kooky kid," he said.

Thankfully, Moore sings in English. Common themes seem to be about rough nightclubs, rougher women and the men who would fight over them.

Only one of his woman-who-done-him-wrong songs was semi-autobiographical, he said, laughing at the question. And no, although he's visited New Orleans nightclubs plenty of times, he's never been slugged by a bar patron in New Orleans.

"Brooklyn, yeah, but not in New Orleans," he said.

To get an idea of Moore's sound, consider the cover tunes he and his Magnolia Band perform honoring artists such as The Neville Brothers, Delbert McClinton, Muddy Waters and New Orleans great Dr. John. Certainly Moore's "HooDoo Man" title track kicks off with a beat and melody that immediately evokes Dr. John.

Moore is backed by locals Charles Frommer of Tillson on sax, Dominic Sinesio of Stone Ridge on Guitar, Eric Parker of Lake Hill on drums and Jeremy Baum of Newburgh on keyboards. Peter Vitalone of New Jersey alternates on keyboards and trumpet player Wayne Castle of Connecticut, vocalist Christine Martinez of Massachusetts and bass player Albert Rogers of North Carolina round out the Magnolia Band.