Tim Heidecker on the Battle of Life and Everything ‘Slipping Away’

Sitting in a Nashville hotel room one recent morning, Tim Heidecker is awaiting his Americanafest showcase. It’ll take place later that evening at 3rd & Lindsley. And Heidecker’s dreading the gig. Not because he doesn’t enjoy the act of performance. It’s simply the format in which the show will be set up: solo.

“It’s not my preferred way of presenting my songs,” Heidecker says. “I just came off the road with my band. Playing every night for two weeks. I’m a little road tested and warmed up. But, these songs benefit from other people playing them with me.”

That sense of vulnerability and, perhaps, a slight fear of what may or may not lie just around the corner of the grandiose ether surrounding all of us are core themes at the heart of Heidecker’s latest album, Slipping Away.

Though many may know Heidecker for his comedic brilliance – as part of innovative comedy duo Tim & Eric, on an array of beloved TV shows or across the big screen in major Hollywood films – he’s also been a lifelong singer-songwriter. And a damn fine one, too.

Now 48, Heidecker offers Slipping Away (available October 18 via Bloodshot Records) as a genuine snapshot of a human being wrestling with middle age and the intricacies of daily life. Just like many of us in the same boat of age and awareness.

Sonically, Slipping Away straddles psychedelic alt-country, surf rock, and indie folk. The ethereal attitude and lyrical ethos flows in the same river as Pavement and Wilco, with hints of Guided By Voices and They Might Be Giants felt throughout.

In an era of doom and gloom, Heidecker’s humor and zest are much needed – the notion that sometimes all you can do is laugh in pure amazement at the absurdity of what’s outside your front door.

“They say that Jesus Christ is coming back some day/ But if I were him, I think I would stay,” Heidecker sings during “Bows and Arrows.” “Up in the clouds, hanging out with dad/ Cuz things down here, things are going bad.”

In truth, much like his comedy, Tim Heidecker’s music is aimed at the idea of connectivity. Finding common ground with you and me. And his constant yearning to expose the lunacy and mysteries of one’s existence within the cosmic universe is why we’ve come to turn to Heidecker for comfort and solidarity in uncertain times.

I replayed the album this morning while having coffee with my girlfriend. And, in a good way, I started having existential thoughts. It made me think, “This is an honest snapshot of someone on the cusp of 50, who’s looking at the chaos of their youth in the rearview mirror and looking at the unknowns of growing older through the windshield.”

Tim Heidecker: That’s beautifully put. Can I use that? [Laughs] I mean, yes, I agree with that. It’s funny, you writers, critics and journalists are always better at vocalizing what I’m trying to say than I am. And I appreciate it. These things come from such a subliminal place for me that it’s nice to hear how it’s received or how it’s perceived. A lot of the writing of this record came right after the pandemic. There was this real, palpable feeling of an apocalyptic kind of mentality happening.

It still feels like that every day, though. That’s the world we live in now.

Yeah, for sure. And it was very crisp in 2020, 2021, 2022. In my comedy, I’ve tried a few different times to write shows about that. I’ve had a couple of projects that didn’t go very far, that were sort of about the end of the world. So, it’s been on my mind for a while and I wanted to do a record with that sort of concept or theme. And I started writing songs, letting the record be this way of getting those ideas out of my head.

With the title, Slipping Away, is that a reference to how fast time goes?

Picking the title of a record is always a pain and challenge to crystallize it. But, to me, there’s two meanings. The first half of the record is maybe a little more upbeat and positive and there’s this feeling of being content or being happy. Then, it can also mean things falling apart and disintegrating [in the second half]. There’s Slipping Away Side A and there’s Slipping Away Side B.

There’s also a very ethereal vibe to the album, too, where it’s like a dreamlike state.

Mm-Hmm.

With the song “Hey, Would You Call My Mom for Me,” was that a real encounter you had with somebody?

It was. We were on tour up in Vancouver. They have a big area of Vancouver that’s kind of been surrendered to addicts. They call it “Zombie Town.” I was walking around there and a kid asked me that. It was early in the morning and it took me off guard. I gave him 20 bucks and was like, “Sorry, I can’t.” I just couldn’t get involved. But, I came back to that line of, “Hey, would you call my mom for me?” Especially after the pandemic and living in Los Angeles, seeing a lot of people on the street. I felt like I wanted to capture that moment. Little journalistic songwriting there.

I’ve read that you’re an atheist/agnostic. And I wonder – with the pandemic and just life in general – if you’ve started to have maybe a crisis of faith or identity as you’ve gotten older?

I wouldn’t say crisis.

Recalibration, maybe?

Recalibration is fair. Honestly, I’m fairly firm in my agnosticism. I wouldn’t consider myself an atheist. I think it’s kind of an irrelevant question for me [about] what’s going on outside of reality. But, I’ve started therapy and working on some personal issues, health issues and stuff this past year. I don’t want to say midlife crisis. But, it’s this feeling of like, “Alright, I’ve been kind of coasting on my instincts for a long time. And it’s gotten me to where I am, which is a pretty good place. But, I’d like to figure out how I’m going to spend the rest of my life here – maybe a little happier, a little less anxiety-ridden, easier to be around.”

It’s been a couple years of taking the old car into the shop and getting it adjusted for long-term use. I mean, I’ve been touring with this band for the past couple years. And part of me is like, “Man, love this so much. How many more of these am I going to get to do? How many more of these runs where you’re just on the bus and you’re playing every night?” It takes a lot of work to get to that place where things are going well.

There’s the line on the record – I think it may be my favorite line on the record – [in the song “Something, Somewhere”] that goes, “There is a feeling I get, when things are going good but it’s coming to an end.” You’re at that place where things are working, something you’re working on or a project where you see the end. It’s that end of summer melancholy feeling. And I think you can zoom out and look at your life a little bit that way, too.

I couldn’t find much about your early music years. And I was curious about where music begins for you, and as somebody like yourself who came of age in early 1990s Pennsylvania. Was music just something that was always there?

Yeah. I came from a very musical family. My grandmother was very religious. She could play piano and she could play by ear. So, she could sit at the piano and figure out songs. My mom loved music and my dad was a big classic rock guy. He had a great record collection, then he updated his record collection to tapes as we were driving around in the ’80s. He would play the golden oldies and the best of the Beatles, [those] red and blue compilation [albums] a lot. I was always very performance driven, dressing up and doing shows and playing from as far back as I can remember. We had a piano in the house, and eventually a guitar came around. It was just something my parents really encouraged, I guess. My sister took piano lessons. It was just part of our education. I went to Catholic school, so there was a lot of singing. Just a lot of music around all the time.

Eventually, that led to bands being formed. My cousin had a hardcore punk band. And I gravitated towards those kinds of people who were also into music. I had an uncle who had really great taste in music and turned me on to all kinds of artists in the ’80s and ’90s [like] Billy Bragg. I remember him being a big fan of [Billy]. And it was fairly easy to put a band together. We all wanted to be on TV or make movies or create stuff. But, the band was the thing that you could put together after a good Christmas of getting a practice amp and a starter guitar. Your friend has a drum set and you could go into a basement and make something. We used to rent four-track tape recorders from the music store and make demos.

I hear a lot of influences on Slipping Away – indie rock, folk, alt-country. I hear a lot of stuff, too, that I grew up in the ’90s loving. I hear some Pavement influences. With Pavement, they always came across as a band where you could do whatever you wanted, and a song can be whatever you want it to be – something I always loved about them.

I loved Pavement. In fact, they’re a really important band for me, because when I was in high school my head was really firmly in the classic rock ’60s and ’70s world. I didn’t really connect to anything modern. I didn’t like pop punk music. I mean, it was okay. But, I didn’t really like the hardcore scene, the emo scene. I found it really boring and exhausting to listen to, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I didn’t like a lot of hip-hop. Whatever was happening in the early ’90s, I was not connecting with it.

And then I heard [Pavement’s] Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain record. I remember hearing the drumstick in [opening track] “Silence Kid.” And I was really into Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones, so it was a connection, a through line from the Stones to Pavement, where it felt like, “Oh, these guys are happening now.” That opened me up to Guided By Voices, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Yo La Tengo, and that Matador Records scene. I was like, “Oh, I am of my age now. I’m of my time.” [Laughs]

When you’re touring, is it weird people may have preconceived notions of what to expect and expectations that aren’t accurate?

Yeah. I mean, that’s diminishing a little bit now. I think people are getting the message. There’s still people that are confused. They’re waiting for the punchline to drop. It took me a while to figure out how to behave as a performer when I’m doing my music. I’ve found this little sweet spot, where I can still be funny and I can still be myself. I don’t have to pretend to be this pretentious singer-songwriter, because I’m not. I’m just me. I don’t want to keep it too serious, so I lighten the mood enough where people get a little bit of both – they get the full picture, they get the full version of me.

One of the songs on Slipping Away is “Dad of the Year,” where you sing about how you had all these expectations growing up and conquering the world, as we all do. And now you’re in your late forties and you’re like, “Well, that didn’t really happen. But, in this other way, I’m actually really happy with where I landed.”

For sure. The goal is to get to that place where you’re content and satisfied with wherever you are. And in the way the world is, it’s very hard to not compare yourself to everything else that’s going on, to people you don’t know. Why do people care about Ben Affleck and J. Lo? [Laughs] When I see a picture of them, there’s this intrusive thought of, “Why aren’t they taking pictures of me?” And if you really are honest, I think everybody has varying degrees of that. And that’s the battle of life – to find ways of knowing how to be happy with where you’re at. But, don’t squash ambition, because ambition is very important, too.

To that, it does feel like you’re in a good place right now.

I’m in a great place. I’m in Nashville. I’m excited for the record to come out. I hope people sit with it. Some records you just need to sit down and listen to. I mean, Slipping Away is only 30 minutes. [Laughs] This isn’t coffee shop music.


Photo Credit: Chantal Anderson

BGS Long Reads of the Week // June 12

Don’t look now, but we’re approaching the mid-point of June and another week has passed us by. YIKES! Luckily, we have another week’s worth of long reads for you, too!

The long-winding catacombs of the BGS annals and archives have so much to offer. As we share our favorite longer, more in-depth articles, stories, and features to help you pass the time, take a minute to follow us on social media [on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram] so you don’t miss a single #longreadoftheday pick!

This week’s long reads travel from the canyon drives above Hollywood to Pavement to a former Oregon poet laureate to everyone’s favorite five-stringed instrument. Check ’em out.

Stephen Malkmus of Pavement Ventures Down Acoustic Road on New Album

Stephen Malkmus, of the bristly, brainy 1990s indie rock band Pavement, joins a host of fellow alt-rockers in dabbling with folk and acoustic sounds. On a brand new album, Traditional Techniques, which was produced by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, Malkmus expands on the flickers of folk interest that have permeated his career, though he may not claim mastery of any of them. [Read our #CoverStory interview]


Sara Watkins Wants Us to Ride Along on Watkins Family Hour’s brother sister

Earlier this week we celebrated Sara Watkins’ birthday (June 8, for the record) with a revisit to our recent Artist of the Month interview where she walked us through her recent Watkins Family Hour album, brother sister. For the first time in their lifelong musical careers, Sara and her brother Sean focused on creating music centered on their own duo. brother sister was the result. [Celebrate Sara’s birthday with a read]


Aoife O’Donovan Finds Her Heart in the Verse of Others

Aoife O’Donovan’s latest EP, Bull Frogs Croon (And Other Songs), arrived in March. Our Cover Story unspooled the inspiration she gained via poet Peter Sears, the former poet laureate of Oregon, whose verse is utilized in three songs O’Donovan wrote and arranged with Teddy Abrams and Jeremy Kittel. The project is rounded out by a Hazel Dickens cover and a classic folk song, giving listeners a sampling of each of O’Donovan’s folky expertises. [Read the interview]


The Byrds’ Chris Hillman Reflects on Laurel Canyon and Why He Had to Leave

A new, two-part documentary, Laurel Canyon, traces the comings and goings of several generations of folk rockers down Sunset Boulevard and up into the hills. Chris Hillman (The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers), one of the canyon’s earliest and most famous residents, about the new film, the community, the music, the neighborhood, and why he had to leave. [Read the full story]


Mixtape: Ashley Campbell’s Banjo Basics

With her classic 2018 Mixtape banjoist and singer/songwriter Ashley Campbell reinforced the deeply held BGS belief that– MORE!! BANJOS!! From songs by her late, legendary father Glen and her godfather Carl Jackson to classics from folks like J.D. Crowe, John Hartford, and the Dixie Chicks, this mix has a little bit of everything and a whole lot of five-string. [Read & listen]


 

Stephen Malkmus of Pavement Ventures Down an Acoustic Road on New Album

Pop and rock performers of mainstream and indie varieties alike, and their promotional teams, tend to make a production out of explaining sudden embraces of stripped-back production. Often, they spin tales of artistic ennoblement — of Justin Timberlake and John Mayer escaping the glossy trappings of their home genres to do soul searching in more pastoral musical settings; of Kesha and Lady Gaga staking their claims to singer/songwriter approaches that seemed slightly more grounded and organic than the club bangers of their pasts.

They temporarily tether themselves to seemingly sturdy, sincere, rooted approaches, and enlist musical guides and collaborators knowledgeable in those lineages. Even Beck, one of the leading postmodern shape-shifters of the alt-rock era, treated venturing closer to folk as a means of trading a reliance on irony for reflection, and Thurston Moore, long associated with the artfully discordant squall of Sonic Youth, consciously personalized his songwriting approach on an acoustic project that Beck produced.

Stephen Malkmus, whose bristly, brainy 1990s indie rock band Pavement was a distant descendant of Sonic Youth and a contemporary of Beck, isn’t at all oblivious to the fact that there are scripts for lending meaningful context to newly cultivated folk leanings. But Malkmus has carried his slouchy, self-deprecating demeanor into his 50s, and it’s his style to be amiably noncommittal. He’s ventured down the acoustic road himself on an album helmed by Chris Funk of the Decemberists and Black Prairie and wryly titled Traditional Techniques. Coming from Malkmus, that’s not meant to come off as any sort of claim to mastery.

He’s used to being interviewed by general interest outlets, not roots-versed ones, so he tries to temper expectations right off the bat when speaking to BGS, describing his knowledge base of folk forms as “sort of a crude appreciation.” He even tries a bit of deflection: “Chris, who I did the record with, he would be able to speak on more levels than me, you know?”

In reality, Malkmus’ catalog with Pavement and his subsequent band the Jicks betrayed flickers of folk interest. He’s admiring of Bert Jansch’s ’60s-era guitar innovations and appreciative of the Nickel Creek cover that introduced his songwriting to the virtuosic string band pop scene in the early 2000s. And he’s playing his 12-string more than ever.

The 10 tracks he recorded with Funk, bolstered by the contributions of guitarist Matt Sweeney and Qais Essar, renowned player of the rabab (an Afghani cousin of the lute), are accomplished and expansive. Malkmus’ sublimely oblique, thoroughly contemporary meanderings easily merge with spry, spindly rhythms and gently psychedelic interplay. It’s an experiment that paid off, and he stepped away from helping with his kids quarantine homeschooling to offer his measured musings on the making of it.

BGS: In the official narrative around this album, you make its origins sound happenstance — as though you were recording a different kind of project with Chris Funk and happened to get distracted by the acoustic instruments he had lying around.

SM: That’s somewhat true. But I did get into the 12-string guitar. I have all these dad images: “If you try one drug and then you try a pure, stronger version of it, you never want to go back.” That’s what it kind of feels like with the 12-string guitar, going back to the 6-string. Once your fingers get used to it, it’s just chiming and you’re hearing all these overtones. During this bunkering, I’ve been playing a lot.

You’ve downplayed your folk literacy, but I can hear at least a general interest sprinkled throughout your catalog in songs like “We Dance,” “Folk Jam,” “Father to Sister of Thought,” and “Pink India.”

Yeah, that’s true.

What music were you acquainted with in a British folk-rock or psychedelic folk vein that felt relevant to what you wanted to do?

Richard Thompson and the Fairport Convention, the whole British world, and also Bert Jansch that was a huge influence on Led Zeppelin and Fairport Convention. The English tradition, those kinds of spartan arrangements that were kinda catchy too. I guess I like catchy things. I was coming from a Beatles world, like, “Fuck, that’s getting in my head, that melody.” I also felt with the pickers of England, Richard and Sandy Denny, I would hear something catchy in there and grooving. There was, like, a groove.

In some other interviews you’ve mentioned Gordon Lightfoot as a vocal touchstone.

Oh, I love him.

But there were a couple of performances on Traditional Techniques that made me think less of Lightfoot and more of Beck’s Sea Change, like the calm, composed way you sing “Flowin’ Robes.” It made me wonder whether you learned anything from acoustic forays by your alt-rock peers.

Even the first song, “ACC Kirtan,” I thought it back on that one, just because it’s kind of slow and probing. It might be [Beck’s] Mutations instead of Sea Change or something. On all his acoustic albums, he had big world music vibes to it that I could see him jamming out, like throwing a sitar on there or something. Those albums by him, they’re super rich and high fidelity and beautifully recorded by Nigel Godrich. But I guess I don’t really think of those contemporaries when you’re making music at the same time.

How do you relate to the ways that rock or pop musicians’ excursion into folk-leaning forms are presented as personally significant moves, like they’re stripping away the noise and gloss and baring their souls, getting in touch with their roots?

That’s a classic way to see it, right? And also it goes with the sounds; it’s quieter, more direct, versus just naked or whatever.

Everything sort of happens quickly with me. I’ve said a couple times in some interviews, in the back of my mind I always wanted to play an acoustic record of some sort. I just didn’t know how or what to do. I wanted to do it because I thought people would like it too. It wasn’t only just ‘cause I was dying to do it. I also think about what I wanna release and what people might be interested in, and what I think I might be good at, of course. There’s no doubt that I’d think that most people have already heard me that are gonna buy the record. They would like to hear, “What would Steve do in an acoustic environment?”

And of course, we wanna surprise people and do it differently. If you imagined it in your mind, you might not have thought that it would have standup bass and Afghani-American guys playing eastern instruments. We’re sort of aware, or at least I am, of having a little bit of a risk, something gambled, besides not only that you’re just playing quietly. Putting yourself where you’re in a position with people you don’t know; we don’t really know how it’s gonna sound, a little more like a jazz situation in some ways. I didn’t really know what people were gonna play, but I had some rules for Chris and I, which were that we were gonna play it all live in the studio, and the drums were gonna be real quiet, and the bass too.

How much of the album would you say reflects you adapting to or embracing different musical forms and how much is you just framing the thing you do differently?

In the end, for better or worse, I feel like it’s just me putting a version on what I do. Because if you’re just self-aware, what is it really but that? When you’re writing the songs, you can imitate other people in your mind. There’s a lot of that going on. As you run through different ways to approach a riff, you’re usually thinking of not of yourself at first: “This kinda sounds like Led Zeppelin or PJ Harvey,” real basic broad strokes. Then I riff off that. I try to think of the best way. And also in the communal [setting], listen to other people; it’s really important to not have stuck to your own thing.

I’ve gotten the sense that people coming to this music with a working knowledge of your catalog with Pavement and the Jicks find some of these songs, like “What Kind of Person,” to be softer or more sentimental by comparison. Did you think at all about the kinds of tones that people tend to associate with singer-songwriters and folk songs?

Well, I would be thinking that there’s some really deadly serious lyrics about not only “my heart was broken,” but “I’m a poor man that died tragically or whatever and it sucked.” Most of the English ballads are really sad material. You can look at them in a Marxist way or something and say these people were screwed from the outset. I think of folk songs like that, but I also think of Michael Hurley and freaky geniuses like him playing acoustic music in a small bar to stoned people, and it’s not really deadly serious. Sometimes it is for a second, and then it’s funny, or we’re just being together making music, lower stakes. When I say low stakes, the stakes are as simple as just playing with some people in a room, like conjuring up music together, lyrics. Maybe you’re doing them to make the guitarist to your right laugh for a second, rather than make a song for a mother who lost her child young. You know what I mean? [laughs]

You’re talking about the tragic ballad tradition, the stuff that people think of coming over from the British Isles. The modern folk singer-songwriter movement has its own set of expectations in terms of tone and perspective.

Newer stuff, I don’t listen super closely to lyrics or what people are singing about, but it’s usually about love gone wrong.

Wait, you don’t listen that closely to lyrics in general?

Yeah, not really. Sometimes. It really depends. Most things I only listen to once or twice, for better or worse. Of course, other things I dig into super deeply. It’s probably to the detriment of my songwriting or people that like super-tight stuff. A line pops out and I’m like, “That was fuckin’ awesome.” It has to be set up by other things in the song. It’s not like you can just say that line with absolutely nothing around it. I’m more like I hear it in a song, or the way a person sings it, and I love it, rather than looking at it on the written page or thinking of it as just lyrics.

You seem to have a healthy amount of self-awareness about being a musician known for one thing, moving into a different lane.

It’s not only what I think, but also when I played it to other people before I put it out, I listen to others who say, “I like that one.” Or, “Why do you want to release that?” So it’s not only self-awareness but being self-aware enough to ask other people what they think. I think for all musicians, there are certain songs we make that we really like that other people like less. [Laughs]


All photos: Samuel Gehrke