For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. “I knew it would be, like, three records before people were like, OK, this is not a joke.” skip past newsletter promotion “This wasn’t meant to be a joke and I knew it would be a battle to make sure people understood that I wasn’t pranking anybody,” he says. Heidecker recognises the journey from doing weirdo outsider comedy, with the occasional taste for the gross and ridiculous, can result in some pretty hefty baggage to carry when moving on to sincere music. But by tapping into these memories of my friend who passed away, it opened up a huge lane for me to think about that time.”īut has the wearing of so many hats at once, primarily in the comedy world, often playing with the boundaries of reality and sincerity, not resulted in confusion and misconceptions about who Heidecker actually is? “Oh, it’s been a huge problem,” he says with a half laugh but also with a hint of seriousness. “I hadn’t thought about it for a while because when the Tim and Eric thing happened everything was focused so laser-hot on that side of my brain. “I started thinking about one guy who had overdosed years ago that I was very close with,” he says. It’s a record about looking back, sometimes painfully, at his adolescence. In 2022 he released his most personal, intimate and accomplished album to date, High School. In 2020 he released Fear of Death, an album of sun-baked indie folk-rock that featured Weyes Blood and members of Foxygen, the Lemon Twigs and Warpaint. Ten years down the line Heidecker finds himself making a very different kind of music. Underground leaders of the pee-freak scene, your shame no longer has to be private!” The music Heidecker did dabble in was heavy on the comedy: there were spoof Bob Dylan tracks and a band called the Yellow River Boys, whose album Urinal St Station featured tracks such as Slurp it Up and Hot Piss Drinker, along with a blurb that read: “THE album for those of us who believe that the human mouth smiles the most when it is being used as a makeshift urinal. Music never left Heidecker but it took a backseat as things blew up in the world of Tim and Eric, which resulted in Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie, a 2012 feature film featuring Zach Galifianakis, Will Ferrell, John C Reilly and Jeff Goldblum.

Odenkirk thought it was especially funny that the pair had invoiced him for the package.ĭumb and dumber … Heidecker with Eric Wareheim in Billion Dollar Movie. We just were funny with each other.” However Bob Odenkirk, better known as a comedian before his breakout roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, saw the potential in the pair and became something of a mentor and helping hand, getting them broadcast on the US comedy channel Adult Swim after they mailed him a DVD out of the blue. “We never really thought about comedy as something we would do. “We were making art films,” recalls Heidecker. “Music was my ambition originally.” He was a Beatles-obsessed teenager who played in “cringey” and “pretentious” bands, with names like such as the Pulsating Libidos and Shaggy’s Belt Buckle, before he went to film school and met Wareheim. “It was a last resort,” Heidecker laughs.

It’s an intricate and entangled network that has resulted in a vast, sprawling comedic world.īut comedy was not plan A or even plan B. Plus, he hosts a weekly call-in chatshow, Office Hours Live, one episode of which was simply a 12-hour long spoof of Joe Rogan’s podcast. Such as the long-running webseries-cum-fictional universe On Cinema, which is ostensibly a spoof movie review show with storylines so elaborate, wild and nonsensical that it has spawned multiple offshoots – one, the miniseries The Trial, sees Heidecker in court after his character creates a vanity-project festival for his band that leaves 20 kids dead and 158 hospitalised from toxic vape pens that were distributed. Then there are the numerous identities Heidecker has moulded and lived in outside the partnership. Not necessarily in style, tone or presence – even though both lean heavily into absurdity and extreme daftness – but in that they have crafted their own distinct comedic language and interplay that is intrinsically unique. Perhaps Tim and Eric’s closest UK comparison would be Vic and Bob.

Tim and eric