Tim Heidecker is back on tour and back in time with his new album High School

Screengrab from the “Sirens of Titan” music video.

Tim Heidecker has earned the leeway to keep reinventing himself.

With a career that began with an ever-increasing series of Adult Swim programming, the Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! co-star has spent close to two decades in the weirdo alt-comedy space with his eclectic character explorations and disorienting presentation.

The Heidecker empire has spread into equally conceptual podcasts and tours, but he is perhaps least known for his outings into a more “serious” musical space. Involving himself with a rotation of big alternative music names, he’s produced several LPs that evolve from a somewhat tongue-in-cheek yacht rock album to the sleekly produced new release High School, which sees the performer dig up memories, trauma, and retro joy from a specific period in his developmental years. The album is good—the kind of release that would make both the uninitiated and the comedy fans equally sold on his talent in the realm of sincerity.

Heidecker is out on tour right now, with a sizeable backing band supporting the brand new album. But Heidecker is also the show’s opening act, performing as his “No More Bullshit” stand-up persona—a brutally, deliberately assholish caricature of ’90s sexist catchphrase comedians. The dual personas of one of the performer’s more off-putting characters ahead of his delicate, chill vibing musicality promises to provide the type of whiplash the man is known for.

Tim Heidecker and The Very Good Band play the Truman on Aug. 8. Tickets are available here.

We spoke with Heidecker about childhood bullies, sanity, and guitar rigs ahead of that show.

The Pitch: What was your first recording device in high school?

Tim Heidecker: My parents had a portable cassette recorder with a microphone in it. The very first sound on the record is me from one of those cassette recorders. Back then, you could also rent a Tascam four-track for the weekend, so I did a lot of demos on that.

What is your process of starting a song and seeing it through to the final recording? Seems like you’ve got a good crew of people you can trust and have chemistry with. How early do they get involved in new tracks?

I amassed a nice little Rolodex of very talented, cool people who are down to collaborate. There are various ways we might have the origins of a song. It can come while driving my car, lying in my bed, or going on a walk—I’ll get a spark of something. Then it’s just me sitting at the piano and noodling around or finding a chord shape on the guitar that I’m vibing with. Then you ask yourself what this should be about. Nowadays, I don’t worry too much about getting a great recording of it. The iPhone or whatever is fine. I let these pile up and then I reach out to people about making it real. I’m always interested in the collaborative part of arranging and recording, so I’m not too worried if I don’t have it all figured out yet.

You have a series of pretty cohesive concept albums. Is it hard to start writing on something when you’re not sure what the through line is yet? 

The first part of a concept comes from a subconscious place that’s hard to predict or plan for. That’s what lets me right the rest of the song, because once I have the point of view or subject matter, then it is no longer a set of random songs.

Are any of the songs on the album songs that you wrote in high school?

I didn’t need to. I don’t really have much in the well from back then that is worth revisiting, musically.

Was there a song for this album that you loved and it just didn’t make the final cut just didn’t come together?

Yeah, there is a song that is finished and was done the same way all the other songs were done; it’s fully finished. It’s kind of sweet love song, to my wife and about sticking together for the many years we’ve been together, and it’s a very very poppy, kind of Beatlesque-sounding song. It didn’t fit in as we were sequencing the record and trying to keep the concept together. So it was kind of an easy call to just keep it off and save it for my rarities album that will come out one day.

Is the song “Punch in the Gut” based on a true story?

Yeah, it’s true. True-ish. I think there are some liberties taken. There was a friend of mine, a Black kid, who went to another school, but he would come visit us. He came to our school after his school shut down, and there was some theft that happened that wasn’t him, and he got the blame for it. So there was a situation that arose.

You’re about to head out on tour. I saw your tweet recently that said “Oh, boy. Started to have tour dreams. Last night. I dreamt I had an audience and I wasn’t prepared for the show and it ended in violence.” Are you okay?

This is a thing that always happens. Before I begin a big tour, or really any big thing coming up, this happens. Everyone can relate to stress dreams, and it is kinda nice that they’re reminding you of what you have coming up. But this one was pretty livid. I know it’s not gonna happen, but the thought of stepping out there—naked, figuratively or literally—it makes you work a little bit harder, or do a little more prep.

Was this album release and tour something that wound up delayed by COVID-19 or is this all playing out according to your best laid plans? 

The record was supposed to come out in April, but then it got pushed. We were lining up touring with promoters for the summer, and so we decided to push the record a little bit, but now it’s hit in line with the start of the shows, so we feel good about that.

What is your touring setup? Is it mostly you and guitar and a specific amp you like? Or do you have like a whole bunch of effects pedals beneath you?

You should see my YouTube history. It’s full of pedal boards and demos and explanations on how to set them up. I’m not a great guitar player, but in my band I’m the rhythm man, and I have a nice vintage strat. I have a distortion pedal and a tube compressor and a small Fender amp. I want to be a pedal guy but also… I laugh when I see people’s rigs? And you don’t need much of an amp anymore; you don’t need amp stacks, but it is obviously cooler to some people to have a stack of amps behind you. But that’s not what anyone is really hearing. I find that kind of guitar tech fascinating but also I’m not about to do a bunch of soloing and complicated stuff that you necessitate those tone tweaks, when I’m mostly just leading the band.

I think the last time that we spoke in person, I’m fairly certain it was the day that Glendale came out. Are you guys playing tracks from that far back or did other songs not resonate with you anymore? Is the setlist for this tour spanning the discography?

I’m going to play around with it some more, but we do a few songs from Glendale. Do a few songs from that and the other previous albums. It’s tricky because now that now I’ve built up a discography and I’m doing the stand-up for the first half hour of the show. The music side’s setlist is about an hour and a half or so. So that fills it up pretty quick.

There’s only so much you can give in a night when you are both the opener and the headliner.

Time itself becomes a problem. We want to like jam out a little bit and let some of these songs breathe and have time for talking and telling some tales.

On the album’s opening track, “Buddy,” you include a line where you seem to be asking your younger self if he thinks that you’ve let both of you down. Do you think he’d be disappointed to know that he’s now a star of stage and screen and a touring rockstar?

I would think it’s very cool and would be very proud of where I’m at right now.

Tim Heidecker and The Very Good Band play the Truman on Aug. 8. Tickets are available here.