Tim Heidecker talks ‘Two Tims’

Tim Heidecker understands the importance of being earnest.

“I don’t want to live my life just buried under levels of irony and distance, you know,” the comedian and musician said.

Heidecker’s career started as half of the comedy duo Tim and Eric, but these days, he’s part of another pair: Tim Heidecker and Tim Heidecker.

In the “The Two Tims Summer Tour ’23,” Heidecker plays Jekyll and Hyde, performing his stand-up routine for the first half, and then his original music with his group, the Very Good Band, for the second. The show comes to The Rialto Theatre on Monday, July 31.

“It really is a matter of changing shirts,” Heidecker said.

“When performers do their thing, and they come off stage, there’s this residual adrenaline that they don’t know what to do with. Well, luckily, I get to go back out and do more.”

The two Tims wouldn’t be caught dead at the same party. Heidecker’s songs are introspective, heartfelt tunes influenced by the likes of Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon and Steely Dan. His comedy is more akin to a satirical performance art, whether he’s putting himself on trial for murder or broadcasting a 12-hour parody of the Joe Rogan Experience.

In his stand-up, Heidecker plays the bumbling, abrasive role of an observational comic who observes little, who fumbles through botched punchlines and tries to hypnotize the audience so he can steal a peek at his notes.

“It’s really fun to do the stand-up character because you get to just be the Id,” Heidecker said.

“You get to be the worst version of yourself and yell at people, and so that’s fun. But in the second half, it’s a little more earnest, a little more soul bearing.

“It can be a little embarrassing or vulnerable. With jokes you get an immediate reaction. With music, you kind of have to wait for the song to be over to get any reaction. I always joke that I wonder if after the first song there would be no applause. How awkward that would be?”

Heidecker’s commitment to the bit has forced him to put up a barrier between himself and his audience during his live shows. The new format, according to the comic, allows him to address his fans out of character.

“I get to appreciate the audience, thank the audience and the band,” he said.

“A lot of the people have been with me for almost 20 years now, and then there’s some young kids who grew up watching my stuff. So, I do feel like I get a feeling of warmth and genuine love from me going to the audience, and from them to me, a very warm and joyous feeling to come together.

“There’s a place for the satire and the irony that’s in the first half, and then it’s sort of a release. You don’t have to be all super ironic and cool the whole time. You can kind of say, ‘How’s it going? How’s everyone doing?’”

While his comedy bits and stunts are carefully crafted and involved, Heidecker’s songwriting is more of a spur of the moment process of free association and playing around with ideas.

“There’s usually a couple of moments in the process where, and this sounds so pretentious, but the work signals to me what I’m thinking about,” the songwriter said. “So, I go into songwriting kind of subconsciously. And then over time a theme emerges that I can then use to continue to write. It’s just a discovery process most of the time, and I don’t even see some of the connections until it’s kind of nearing the end.

“But I like the idea of records having purpose. That there’s a reason these songs are there together. And how it works with the album art. I’m a fan of those kinds of records.”

The concept for his nostalgia-fueled, 2022 LP “High School” (produced by Mac DeMarco, Eric D. Johnson, Drew Erickson) is self-explanatory. On the cover, a teenaged Heidecker, wielding an Epiphone, looks toward something just out of frame. In the first moments of the record, a crackling soundbite from a home video introduces the musician.

“Timmy Heidecker, go ahead, sing your song.”

On the tracks to follow, Heidecker tells stories from his salad days; schoolyard fistfights, stolen crushes, daytime television, waterbeds. In “Sirens of Titan,” (featuring the inimitable Kurt Vile) he references Kurt Vonnegut, the Velvet Underground, and Claudia Schiffer all in one line, as if the setup to the world’s most niche “walks into a bar” joke.

According to the musician, the theme came to him while noodling around with the title track, “Buddy,” a requiem for a troubled friend from Heidecker’s youth.

“I didn’t really know what I was writing about until maybe the second verse or something,” Heidecker said. “And I started thinking about some old friends that I had lost touch with, and hadn’t thought about in a while. And I realized that I hadn’t thought about that time in my life.

“So I just thought about who I was in high school, what I was into and what I wanted to be and what I thought about the world. What I was listening to, what I was reading. It felt like it wasn’t cringey anymore to think about that period.

“In your 20s and 30s, the last thing you want to do is think about who you were in high school. And now in my late 40s, It’s like, ‘Oh, I like that kid, and I think he turned out OK.’”

But Heidecker insists on rooting the album firmly in the present. The track, “I’ve Been Losing,” chronicles his sense of defeat after the cancellation of a few of his projects, and his feelings that the “business of television has changed” in a manner that offers no place for his absurdist style of comedy.

In the ever-relatable “Get Back Down to Me,” Heidecker imparts the importance of focusing on the self, and not letting worries about others trample personal well-being.

“You know how there’s people in your life where you’re like, ‘Man, I’m putting so much energy into this person.’ Some people become the star of your movie, and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, what about me?’

“And it sounds selfish, but I can’t be worrying about this person as much as I am.”

The song inspires the question: What does the road to get back to oneself look like? For Heidecker, a major part of that process is “doing this tour.”

“We did a run last summer, and we had so much fun that by the end I think we were already plotting this summer,” Heidecker said.

“When it’s all working good, and the people you’re traveling with are cool and fun to be with, being on the bus in the summer, driving across the country, it beats vacation. That’s for sure.

“I should note that our guitarist, Connor Gallaher, is a Tucson native, and is very excited to be coming home. And he’s said nothing but good things about the venue and the town. So come out and show Connor some love.”

“The Two Tims Summer Tour ’23”

WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday, July 31

WHERE: The Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress Street, Tucson

COST: Tickets start at $40; all ages

INFO: timheidecker.com

This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 2, 2023.