Tim Heidecker

Best known for his work as a comedian, writer, and actor, Tim Heidecker is also an accomplished musician and songwriter whose tunes don't necessarily have to rely upon humor to succeed. While he had played in bands since the 1990s, his music first began winning a large audience when some of his songs appeared on Awesome Show, Great Job, the TV series he created with his creative partner Eric Wareheim, and his work appeared on two albums of music from the show. Heidecker's love of '70s soft rock found an outlet on a pair of albums he made with Awesome Show composer Davin Wood, 2011's Starting from Nowhere and 2013's Some Things Never Stay the Same. Heidecker's barbed political satire informed 2017's Too Dumb for Suicide: Tim Heidecker's Trump Songs, while his fascination with vintage pop grew on 2019's What the Brokenhearted Do (a breakup album depicting a breakup that didn't actually happen) and 2022's High School (ten sometimes funny, sometimes wistfully sad songs about his days as a teenager in Pennsylvania). Heidecker took a detour into country and roots music sounds on 2024's Slipping Away. Tim Heidecker was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 1976. He grew up with a passion for both music and comedy, and played in a variety of indie rock bands (and released a prog rock parody, 2002's Theatre of Magic, credited to the Tim Heidecker Masterpiece) before he began writing and producing material with fellow comic Eric Wareheim. Known to fans as Tim & Eric, the pair's first television project, an animated series for Adult Swim titled Tom Goes to the Mayor, debuted in November 2004 and was successful enough to spawn a live-action follow-up, Awesome Show, Great Job!, which was first broadcast by Adult Swim in February 2007. Heidecker wrote some songs for Awesome Show in collaboration with Wareheim and composer Davin Wood, which appeared on a pair of albums that collected music from the show's two seasons, 2008's Awesome Record, Great Songs! and Uncle Muscles Presents: Casey and His Brother. Tim and Davin began making music outside of the confines of the show as Heidecker & Wood and celebrated their not-at-all ironic love of soft rock on 2011's Starting from Nowhere and 2013's Some Things Never Stay the Same. In 2013, Heidecker's country-rock band the Yellow River Boys also released an album, Urinal St. Station. As a solo artist, he issued Cainthology: Songs in the Key of Cain, an EP inspired by presidential candidate Herman Cain, in 2012, as well as a string of Bob Dylan parodies that included "Titanic," a spoof of a song from Dylan's 2012 album Tempest, and "Running Out the Clock," which aped the 1983 album Infidels. Heidecker released In Glendale, his first solo album and most straightforward set of songs yet, in 2016. The following year, Too Dumb for Suicide: Tim Heidecker's Trump Songs gathered his songs about Donald Trump in a compilation that benefited suicide prevention organizations. As Heidecker became better known for his left-wing political views, conservatives began littering his social media accounts with posts claiming Tim's wife had grown tired of living with a liberal and divorced him. Taking their joke and running with it, the happily married Heidecker responded with the 2019 album What the Brokenhearted Do, a song cycle that once again paid homage to '70s soft rock while telling the story of a man struggling with a traumatic breakup. At a charity event that June, he collaborated with Weyes Blood mastermind Natalie Mering on a cover of the Beatles' "Let it Be." A recorded version of their cover appeared on his 2020 album Fear of Death, which also featured the Mering-Heidecker original "Oh How We Drift Away." That same year, Heidecker's first standup special, An Evening with Tim Heidecker, was made available on video and audio download. For 2022's High School, Heidecker recorded ten songs informed by his memories of his teenage days, most recorded in Mac DeMarco's home studio, with a few produced by his frequent collaborator Jonathan Rado. The witty, bittersweet set included guest vocals from Kurt Vile on the song "Sirens of Titan." Heidecker and his Very Good Band toured following the album's release, and a four-song EP, 2024's Live in Boulder, was recorded during a 2022 concert in Colorado. Also in 2022, Heidecker sat in on Kevin Morby's LP This Is a Photograph, credited with "laughs." Heidecker signed with the venerable roots music label Bloodshot Records for his next project, and fittingly, 2024's Slipping Away was rooted in country and contemporary folk, as well as adult concerns such as writer's block, parenthood, getting older, and anxieties about the future. He was backed by his touring unit, the Very Good Band -- Connor "Catfish" Gallaher on guitar and pedal steel, Vic Berger on keyboards, Eliana Athayde on bass and backing vocals, and Josh Adams on drums. After the album's issue, Heidecker and the Very Good Band hit the road, playing a string of dates with Waxahatchee and Snail Mail. Under his new deal, Bloodshot also reissued Fear of Death, High School, and Live in Boulder on vinyl. Heidecker was also one of over a hundred artists who contributed a song to Cardinals at the Window, a digital benefit compilation produced to raise money for flood relief in North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene's devastating impact.
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