Born August 24, 1962 in Tipton, Missouri, David Michael Koechner is an American comedian, musician and character actor. Koechner began studying improvisational comedy in Chicago at the ImprovOlympic, under the teachings of Del Close, before joining the Second City Northwest. After one-year stints of doing sketch comedy on Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O’Brien, he began taking small parts in films such as Man on the Moon and Wag the Dog. While filming the country mockumentary Dill Scallion, Koechner befriended Dave ‘Gruber’ Allen, forming The Naked Trucker & T-Bones Show. The act became a hit at Hollywood club such as Largo, and the dup were invited to open for Tenacious D.
David is the son of Margaret Ann and Cecil Stephen Koechner. His father ran a business that manufactured turkey coops where he used to work. He was raised in a Catholic family of German and Irish descent. He studied political science at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas and then transferred to the University of Missouri. After college, Koechner moved to Chicago where he studied improvisation at the IO (formerly the ImprovOlympic) with Del Close and Charna Halpern graduating in 1994. He went on to become an ensemble member of Second City Northwest.
In 1995, Koechner landed a yearlong stint on Saturday Night Live, joining the show with fellow Second City friends Nancy Walls and Adam McKay. During his time at SNL, he befriended guest-writer David ‘Gruber’ Allen, and fellow castmate Will Ferrell. Some of Koechner’s recurring skits included Bill Brasky, the British Fops (playing Fagan, opposite Mark McKinney), Gary Macdonald (the fictional younger brother of Weekend Update anchor/SNL castmember Norm Macdonald, based on “Jokey”, a character he originated at Second City), Will Ferrell’s “Get Off the Shed” sketches (playing his neighbor, Tom Taylor), and Gerald “T-Bones” Tibbons.
On the show, Koechner also impersonated several celebrities, including Burt Reynolds, Mike Ditka, Charlie Sheen, Robert Shapiro, Willard Scott, Oliver Stone, Phil Gramm, David Kaczynski, and Pat Buchanan. After his one season on SNL, Koechner joined the 1996–97 sketch casts of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, where he was perhaps best remembered in the NBC Gargoyles recurring sketches, pairing Koechner with Conan regular Brian McCann as two obnoxious Gargoyle statues often perched outside Conan’s desk window. In the late 1990s, Koechner took several minor acting roles in films such as Wag the Dog, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and Man on the Moon.
In 2007, Koechner was seen in his first leading role in The Comebacks (which opened on October 19), the first comedy to be released under Fox Searchlight’s Fox Atomic division. Koechner played a college football coach with the worst record in the history of the sport vows to turn things around with his new team of ragtag recruits. He described this career opportunity as the “first lead for the right-hander.” Veteran actor Carl Weathers played Koechner’s rival coach. Though Koechner, who usually writes and improvises his material, had no involvement with the screenplay, he complimented director Tom Brady for taking “great care to make it as smart as he could,” adding that it’s a sports comedy rather than a spoof.
Koechner is married to actress Leigh Koechner and has five children, his 2 youngest are twins Sargent and Audrey, born 2 June 2006. He also performs regularly in Los Angeles at both the ImprovOlympic West theater (in a show entitled Beer Shark Mice), and at Largo, the nightclub where the Naked Trucker Show plays regularly.
David Koechner Photo Gallery
