Comedian David Koechner brings his stand-up tour and endearing Midwestern charm to Spokane

In small town Pennsylvania, a balding, paunchy, grown man walks into a paper company, sneaks up behind the manager, yanks the manager’s jacket over his head, puts him in a headlock and hollers, “Guess who has two thumbs and likes to bone your mom? THIS GUY!”

In San Diego, an overconfident, immature sportscaster in an outsized cowboy hat reaches across a coworker's desk, grabs her chest, smirks and says, “Sorry about that—whammy!” then proceeds to ask her out for chicken and sex.

Todd Packer of The Office and Champ Kind from Anchorman — two of the worst people to ever assault the screen — were both brought to life by David Koechner, a farm boy from Missouri who decided at age 13 that he would be on Saturday Night Live.

Koechner (pronounced KECK-nur) comes to Spokane this weekend, headlining stand-up shows and hosting a Saturday afternoon of Office-themed trivia. The team trivia competition will also include backstage stories from Michael Scott’s best friend, plus a competition to impress Koechner with your best impressions of Jim, Kevin, Creed, Dwight, or Meredith.

In his stand-up, Koechner won’t shy away from low-brow poop jokes, but he’d rather talk about taking his kids to Florida or getting his family another dog. Come out and watch the Pack-man himself fade away into a dad bod of Midwestern charm.

As a teenager, Koechner didn’t decide that he wanted to be typecast as a douchebag. Don’t be fooled—his current portfolio definitely extends beyond slimeball, like when he played a sweater-vested uncle in the poignant dramedy Braking for Whales, or the voice of a friendly butler robot in the Disney Junior series Puppy Dog Pals.

But Koechner’s best known roles are “very, very damaged” people, he says — and it’s his job to take care of them.

“You can't play them like you hate them,” he says. “You must play them for whatever joy you think is happening. So my job is to show that this is the wrong behavior, while you're celebrating it in a way. This is the wrong guy that we should not hold up as anything but a caustic, horrible individual.”

Koechner knows a little something about caustic individuals. He studied political science at the University of Missouri, thinking he might become a politician to serve Missourians.

“And then I realized about third year in, like, ‘Oh, I'm not gonna make it because this is a different ball game,’” he says. “I didn't realize it's about accumulating power and ego. So I was a bit disillusioned.”

He quit school, worked and saved up some money. He moved to Chicago, where he started an exhausting schedule performing for Second City and the Improv Olympics at the same time.
Koechner met Steve Carell in Chicago in the early '90s, laying the groundwork for the cringiest BFFs on television.

In fact, it was a golden era at Second City, the famed comedy training grounds, with Koechner and Carell joking around with other future stars like Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Andy Richter, Adam McKay and Chris Farley, plus “producers and writers that you might not know their name, but they have been critical in the success of many other people's shows,” Koechner says, listing names like Tom Purcell, Brian Stack and Brian McCann.

Koechner stayed in Chicago for nine years, until he landed a spot on SNL. He decided he would stay in New York for three seasons or less. After poor ratings in the mid '90s and stiff competition from other late night shows, Koechner thought SNL had run its course.

“When you decide that, as they say, the universe is listening, so I was done in a year,” Koechner says.

It might have been an angry producer who kicked him out, or it might have just been manifestation.

“I'm pretty stubborn and I'm pretty determined. When I decide something's gonna happen, it oftentimes does.”

Leaving SNL didn’t hurt Koechner one bit — he has over a hundred screen credits. But he still loves stand-up.

“There's immediate feedback from the audience,” he says. “It could be daunting, but I love performing. I love finding new material. I just found a whole new 12 minutes because my daughters and I took a manatee and dolphins tour in Naples, Florida, and there was not one manatee nor dolphin to be found.”

Because what’s more universal than paying for something and not getting what you expected?
Koechner was thrilled to replace a vulgar bit in his show with a story about his family vacation.

“Sucking your own cock is not my brand. But it was a piece that I found and I worked on and it worked really well,” he says. “[But] every time I'm like, ‘Oh, I gotta get this f—ing piece out of my show!' When you have a manifestation, it presents itself.”

This summer is the first time his kids, all five of them, will watch him do stand-up. His daughters saw his show while they were not seeing dolphins in Naples. They told him they liked it — high praise that not all showbiz parents get. Surprising, too, considering Koechner will often do comedy characters for his kids when they’re mad at him.

To solidify his Dad-you’re-embarrassing-me vibe, Koechner walks around LA in fedoras and full-brimmed straw hats. He blames it on being bald in sunny southern California. Baseball caps, he says, don’t cover the ears.

“I've been meaning to get a new hat,” Koechner says. “I haven't had one in a minute, so maybe this week I'll go and do it.”

By “go and do it,” he means go to Baron Hats, a haberdashery in Burbank. It’s got an 18th century machine that measures heads for the perfect fit.

They may still have a mold of Koechner’s melon sitting around somewhere. Because the first hat he bought there was a huge cowboy hat — the very hat that turned him into that asshole Champ Kind.

David Koechner • Fri, July 21 at 7:30 and 10:15 pm; Sat, July 22 at 4, 7, and 9:45 pm; Sun, July 23 at 7 pm • $25-$35 • Spokane Comedy Club • 315 W. Sprague • spokanecomedyclub.com • 509-318-9998