Tim Heidecker and The Very Good Band: ‘Live in Boulder’ is available now via Spacebomb Records on limited-edition purple vinyl, and digitally on major streaming platforms.Īnd once you’re on stage that night, you say the band is feeling especially dialed-in. It was so gorgeous with the mountains in the background, and I felt very, very happy to be there. I’m in heaven.” It was, like, a real second of that feeling: “Oh my god, this place is beautiful.” I walked down to the town square just around the corner from the venue, and it was still a little early, so there weren’t too many people out. And my first thought was, “Oh man, I think the bus crashed somewhere in the Rockies and we’re dead. … I got up and got off the bus the next morning and it was this crisp, beautiful sunny day. The drive the night before was from Kansas City, so it was a big haul, an overnight drive. We had been on the road for about almost a month: living in the bus and having a great time, but feeling a little ready to go home. What was the experience like when you rolled into town? I understand you arrived in Boulder after a long night on the road. It just checked all the boxes, and it was just a particularly good night. So by that time, I don’t know if you felt it, but everything was clicking and it sounded good. And the Boulder show was, I think, maybe the second-to-last of the tour. And so it kind of came down to a few, and I really wanted the record to feel like it was one night - not just kind of a compilation of shows. Some of them, the performances weren’t as great. It’s kind of a process of elimination, where you record a bunch of shows. Why did you decide to release it as your first live record?

I had a blast at your Boulder show last year, and I’m guessing you did too. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity. And that’s no joke.īoulder Weekly spoke with Heidecker ahead of the album’s vinyl release June 24 via Spacebomb Records. While last year’s performance opened with a stand-up set in character as the boarish hack comedian from his debut 2020 special, An Evening with Tim Heidecker, the recording sticks to the music with 12 high-energy barn burners and breezy piano ballads that might not feel out of place in the discographies of rock’s great smirkers like Warren Zevon and Randy Newman. Now comes Live in Boulder, Heidecker’s first live album, recorded during an August 2022 performance at the city’s iconic Boulder Theater - a retrospective full-length of original songs, backed by a musical ensemble billed as The Very Good Band. His new record finds him settling in comfortably as an emotionally affecting songwriter with formidable powers of observation and melody - a far cry from the bleeding-edge experimental comedy of his early sketch days, but not so far removed as to dampen the singular sense of humor that brightens the corners of his airtight pop-rock arrangements.

His latest, High School, is a straight-faced and tender-hearted collage of adolescent memories, from camping-trip heartbreak (“ Chillin’ in Alaska”) to troubled friends who never made it to the other side (“ Buddy”). The Pennsylvania native is also an accomplished recording artist, with half a dozen studio albums to his name. In the years since Tim and Eric broke the brains of America’s undergrads, the 47-year-old performer has appeared as an actor on the big screen in contemporary classics of comedy ( Bridesmaids), arthouse horror ( Us) and big-budget superhero fare ( Ant-Man and the Wasp), with recurring turns on big-time streamers like Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson and the 18th century send-up Our Flag Means Death.īut Heidecker’s creative drive doesn’t stop in front of the camera, or behind the podcast mic of his long-running call-in show Office Hours and cult-favorite On Cinema.

It also helped create what once seemed an unlikely celebrity out of Heidecker. Beaming to earth a surrealist swirl of sweaty celebrity cameos and off-the-wall characters through the gauze of a ’90s public-access infomercial fever dream, the groundbreaking sketch show was once described fondly by its creators as “ the nightmare version of television.” Alongside early collaborator Eric Wareheim, the duo’s Adult Swim breakout Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!was the absurdist backdrop to many stoned dorm-room late nights for a generation of weirdos during its original run in the late-2000s. If you’re a millennial of a certain age and persuasion, the unhinged anti-comedy of Tim Heidecker has likely shaped your cerebral cortex into knots that will never untwist.

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