Tuesday February 11

TIM HEIDECKER

Slipping Away Tour

with DJ DOUGGPOUND

$40 Advance / $45 Day of Show / Doors at 8:00

Tim Heidecker makes music to be understood. While the multi-hyphenate comedian and songwriter was on tour in 2022—his first time performing his own material with a full band every night—he noticed a recurring response to his lyrics among his devoted fanbase. “Especially people my age, maybe a little younger,” he recalls, “They would come up to me and say, ‘That is how I feel. And it’s nice to know you feel that way, too’”

Where his celebrated work in film and television is often an act of complex, surrealist worldbuilding, the increasingly tender and expertly crafted singer-songwriter material that Heidecker releases under his own name is built to encourage these person-to-person connections. After the breakthroughs of 2020’s wistfully lush Fear of Death, made in collaboration with Weyes Blood, and 2022’s High School, whose multidimensional tales of nostalgia were never quite as distant as they seemed, Heidecker has reached a new peak with Slipping Away, his warmest, fullest, and most ambitious record to date.

“I guess you could say all my records are concept albums to some degree,” Heidecker notes. This one, however, tells a story on a larger scale, offering an imagistic framework that allows for some of his brightest melodies, heaviest themes, and most direct and vulnerable lyrics. “There’s a feeling of before the fall and after,” he explains of the album’s two-part arc. “Things are going well… until they’re not. I wanted to write some stories about that experience.”

Working with his seasoned touring band, Heidecker wrote a series of songs that tap into universal anxieties, familiar settings, and, occasionally, a blast of apocalyptic unease. If he were to perform them solo acoustic, they might sound like folk songs, with their instantly hummable melodies, singalong choruses, and unexpected ability to zoom out far beyond their initial premises. On Slipping Away, a father-daughter trip to a ballgame might spiral into a reflection on the random lottery of fame; a walk into town can induce a nightmarish vision of a world without people and the lifelong struggle between man and society. Even the simple act of making music, as portrayed in the cleverly constructed writer’s block anthem “Well’s Running Dry,” can lead to an earnest reflection on insecurity and aging. “As soon as I wrote that, I worried that it’s not cool to talk about,” Heidecker says. “But a second later, I thought—well that’s challenging and exciting. Let’s push past that.”

Part of the excitement comes from the electrified, lived-in sound of Heidecker’s band: Eliana Athayde on bass and vocals; Josh Adams on drums; Vic Berger on keys; and Connor “Catfish” Gallaher on guitar and pedal steel. While the songs consistently deal with crises of confidence and community, Heidecker refers to Slipping Away as a true group project, a euphoric experience that helped turn his songs into living, breathing things. “My favorite records are the ones that were just recorded in a room with a band playing,” he says, citing classic-rock landmarks from Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and The Band. “And that’s what we did.”