FUSE TV - Tim Heidecker Says New Album "Blurs the Line" Between Comedy & Rock

Two years after releasing their yacht rock-parodying debut album, Heidecker & Wood—the duo of comedian Tim Heidecker and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! composer Davin Wood—are back with a new record, Some Things Never Stay the Same. But unlike their first album, this one is a curveball for longtime fans of Heidecker's comedy.

While soft-rock parodies fit nicely within the Tim & Eric universe, this record packs a genuine shock for fans because—believe it or not—it's not a joke. Well, at least not entirely. Heidecker & Wood have traded the lameness of yacht rock for the biting edge of '70 singer-songwriters like Warren Zevon, Randy Newman and Bruce Springsteen. And while some of the lyrics certainly are funny, others evoke real, smirk-free emotions. Or do they?

To figure out how much of this album is meant in earnest, how much is homage and how much is pure mockery, we spoke with Heidecker at length about Some Things Never Stay the Same, an album he tells us is intentionally crafted to help "confuse the lines” between comedy and rock for listeners.

How did this album come together? Do you and Davin Wood work together or separately? 

On our first record, most of the songs were co-written and made together in real time. On this one, I had songs that were more fully formed and I would send them to Davin and he would sophisticate them up. He would figure out ways to make them more complex. And he brought his own songs too: The songs that he sings on the record are his.

Songwriting can be a pretty solitary thing to do, but I got a little better at making the songs my own. With the home recording technology, a song sometimes starts off as a project of, "How do I make something sound like a Bruce Springsteen song?" So it starts there and if a hook comes in or a line comes along that's interesting, you see it through. There's a big folder on my computer that has 50, 60 songs in various stages of completion. Some of these might have been around in some form at the time of the first record, but there was good period of time between them where these songs collected. Then we just picked 10 and got to work.

So the thought, "Let's do a Bruce song" or "Let's do Randy Newman" predates the actual composition?

Yeah, if it's something I’ve been listening to on heavy rotation, I'll be listening closely to see where the details are that make it what it is. Sometimes it's unconscious, just sitting at the piano and putting words together, finding little melodies.

You end "Getaway Man" by shouting out, "I'm headin' on to the safe house," and there's a big choir at the end of "Salvation Street." Are those funnier musical details premeditated?

Some of it is pretty unconscious or subliminal, getting into the spirit of that kind of music and letting it go. But I try to make sure every song has an angle to it that's a little off or a little funny, though maybe not for everybody. And sometimes that doesn't come until later. You have the song and think, "Well, what's funny about this?" And then you find little things that add a twist.

Do you ever do the opposite and realize you need to tone it down?

No, we always just nail it. [Laughs] Well, at the end of "Salvation Street," we had these backup gospel singers and we had them go kinda crazy. Some of that is still there, but there's an early mix where they were scatting on top of each other and it was mayhem. It was funny and you would laugh, because it was ridiculous, but then it stopped sounding real.

What do you think of your music when you listen back to it? Would you ever put it on while cleaning your house? Assuming you clean your own house.

Sometimes I do! It's weird to listen to your own stuff, especially when you’re singing. I'm hyper-critical of my voice. And I've listened to this record a thousand times in terms of approving stuff like mixes, but I'm generally proud of the way it sounds and the playing on it. And in terms of the song structure, all that stuff is very close to the music I’d be normally listening to. People get a little confused like, "Are you making fun of this stuff?" And ultimately, not really. We might be making fun of some of the sentiments and ideas in these kinds of songs, but musically, we try to make it as good as possible.