"I Love this Neighborhood": Kyle Mooney Toys with Reality in Deep Ellum Headlining Debut

Fittingly, the first glimpse of Kyle Mooney anyone had Thursday night was on a screen.

It was a dryly funny, pre-recorded introduction to his “Real Me/Fake Me” tour, which the comedian, writer, actor and director has launched in support of his first solo album, released earlier this year on acclaimed indie label Stones Throw Records.

Titled The Real Me, the album is just 19 minutes and 58 seconds long and delivered in a way that could be read as either excruciating or excruciatingly funny. The album could herald a new era in Mooney’s career, or simply provide a fascinating detour, making a step into Club Dada Thursday feel a bit like passing through a funhouse mirror, with no guarantee of what awaited on the other side.

“I think you’ll find tonight to be pretty powerful,” Mooney said on screen, delivering the line in a briskly chipper voice. “Embrace your fake self!”

The room, brimming with fans who were primed for Mooney’s reality-bending performance, roared with laughter, which melted into raucous cheers, as Mooney bounded up the few steps to the Deep Ellum venue’s stage, dressed as veteran (and fictional) stand-up comic Bruce Chandling.

It was the beginning of a roughly 85-minute showcase which mixed comedy and music to such a degree that it was difficult to tell where the boundaries existed between them.

The 40-year-old Mooney, who spent nine years on Saturday Night Live, revels in nostalgia nearly to the point of pathology. Still, his style embraces the awkward silence as a tool to elicit cackles from the crowd. One pre-recorded interlude on  Thursday centered on the character of Chris Fitzpatrick, an erstwhile filmmaker of indeterminate age, and his odyssey to make a straight-to-video-style '80s action flick.

Those gathered inside Club Dada on Thursday were locked in from the get-go, a sensation which culminated in a woman named Kieran joining Mooney for a climactic performance of “House That’s Haunted,” complete with creaking door sound effects.

After a stint as “Todd,” a struggling comic from Pacific Beach (Mooney’s foray into crowd work delivered mixed results; some attendees were primed and ready to play, while others didn’t muster much creativity), Mooney emerged to play The Real Me in its entirety, forgoing only one track (“ILY”).  Impressively, he actually made the lo-fi mash-up of country, R&B, 8-bit pop and Beatles-biting folk feel more cohesive and engaging than it does on record.

“It’s a vulnerable situation to turn your back on what you’re known for,” Mooney said at one point, a sentiment tinged with knowing humor. Taken at face value, there’s truth there, but it wasn’t until near the end — as Mooney was joined by opening comic Carmen Christopher — that his true feelings peeked out.

“I’m so thankful you came out,” Mooney said. “I love this neighborhood.”

In a moment when reality feels utterly up for grabs, especially if you spend even a few minutes online, it seemed almost old-fashioned to be inside a room where, for a little while, the question of what’s real and what’s not was used in service of sustained hilarity, rather than ripping society apart.