BIO
Frederick "Doc" Heide is a singer-songwriter, playwright/actor, and psychologist living in rural Door County, Wisconsin.
Raised in small towns on the Wisconsin River with a devoutly Episcopalian mother, Doc developed an early interest in the mind and spirituality. He began writing songs as a child and taught himself guitar on his Mom's virtually unplayable Sears Silvertone by listening to an old Peter, Paul and Mary album.
Doc's songs explore themes of compassion, optimism, friendship, nature, American history, meaning, and mysticism. Musical influences range from Paul Simon and the Beatles to Phoebe Bridgers and Big Thief.
He has performed with folk legend Tom Paxton, opened for guitar wizard Michael Gulezian, and recorded with Grammy winner Paul McCandless (Paul Winter Consort), Windham Hill artist Ira Stein, and more.
His current sound has been described as "transcendental chamber folk," combining literate lyrics with acoustic 6 and 12-string guitars, piano, cello, electric bass, and electric guitar. The effect is ethereal, soothing, and evocative.
On his most recent album (Birthplace of the Thunder) with his band Zen of Thieves, his collaborators include Grammy-nominated cellist Hans Christian (Robbie Robertson Band, Billy Idol, David Darling: https://hanschristianmusic.com), multi-instrumentalist Eric Lewis (winner of the Memphis NARAS Best String Player Award whose playing is featured in the film Song Sung Blue), Austin singer-songwriter Karen Mal, master vocalist Steve Koehler (a frequent performer at Milwaukee Repertory Theater), Amy Chaffee (vocal coach to Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Orlando Bloom, etc.: https://amychaffee.com//), Rory Hoffman (sideman for Ricky Skaggs, Kathy Mattea, etc.), and many others.
In all three of his careers, Doc has been interested in deeper questions.
His songwriting has been shaped by college membership in a folk music group (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay's Heritage Ensemble), which led him to fall in love with the soaring melodies and powerful themes of the American folk tradition. He began writing shows yearly for this group, creating songs that evoked the feeling of folk material. When the Ensemble's founder retired in 1990, Doc inherited the group with a colleague and co-founded Northern Sky Theater, recently described as “one of the most exceptional professional troupes in the country” (Chicago Tribune). (https://northernskytheater.com).
Doc's writing was also strongly affected by his close friendship with Fred Alley, the brilliant songwriter who died at age 38 after winning the Richard Rodgers Award for the Off-Broadway hit The Spitfire Grill, which has had a thousand productions worldwide. Several songs on Birthplace of the Thunder are either about Fred or written for his voice (See https://https://zenofthieves.com/lyrics-song-descriptions).
Doc's highly popular musical comedies (written with Lee Becker, James Kaplan, and Richard Rodgers Award-winner Paul Libman) have used Wisconsin vernacular and broad comic styles to explore the meaning of life (e.g., Belgians in Heaven), our place in the natural order (Guys & Does), and nonviolent resolution of conflict (Packer Fans from Outer Space). https://marvelousmusicals.com
Meanwhile, Doc pursued a third career in clinical psychology, both to better understand mental health and to empirically investigate what Abraham Maslow called "the farther reaches of human nature." Doc's decision to seek a doctorate was influenced by psychotherapy sessions with Ram Dass, a clinical psychologist who under the name Richard Alpert was part of early psychedelic research at Harvard with Timothy Leary.
Doc has published in professional journals on the psychophysiology of meditation, the work of Alan Watts (files/1401520/A Lamp Unto Himself: Alan Watts and the Illumination of Spirit), early psychedelic pioneers (files/1408216/Four Psychedelic Pioneers Who Changed America), existential psychotherapy, spiritual use of cannabis (/files/1401518/Spiritual Benefit from Cannabis), how the metaphor of conflict has shaped theories of psychotherapy (/files/1401674/The agonistic metaphor in psychotherapy: Should clients battle their blues?), how musical comedies can positively affect attitudes /files/1401517/Do You Hear the People Sing? Musical Theater and Attitude Change), parallels between drama and psychotherapy /files/1401686/The Fundamental Things Apply: Parallels Between the Structures of Drama and Psychotherapy), and how psychotherapists can use charismatic communication skills to be more helpful to clients (/files/1401516/"Easy to Sense But Hard to Define": Charismatic Nonverbal Communication and the Psychotherapist).
A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Doc won the Outstanding Research Contribution Award from the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy for being the first to study relaxation-induced anxiety (i.e., paradoxical increases in anxiety in those trying to relax). This work has been cited hundreds of times in professional literature on psychotherapy, anxiety disorders, insomnia, and meditation (files/1401521/Relaxation-Induced Anxiety: Paradoxical Anxiety Enhancement Due to Relaxation).
In 2026 he will be inducted as a Fellow by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters /files/1406575/2026-wisconsin-fellows-announcement.pdf
He is Professor Emeritus at the California School of Professional Psychology-San Francisco at Alliant International University and co-founder of the Huston Smith Center for Psychological and Spiritual Development. He also teaches improv to mental health professionals at the Medical College of Wisconsin. (https://www.mcw.edu/departments/psychiatry-and-behavioral-medicine/education/cme-and-grand-rounds/door-county-summer-institute)
In 2022 he published Tangled in Wonder, a 200-page songbook of 55 of these songs (see link below). Doc's 2022 Songbook: https://northernskytheater.com/shop/books-dvd/songs-of-doc-heide-tangled-in-wonder/#tab-description
Sample Psychology Articles:
/files/1401517/Do You Hear the People Sing? Musical Theater and Attitude Change
/files/1401518/Spiritual Benefit from Cannabis
files/1401520/A Lamp Unto Himself: Alan Watts and the Illumination of Spirit
/files/1401521/Relaxation-Induced Anxiety: Paradoxical Anxiety Enhancement Due to Relaxation
/files/1401674/The agonistic metaphor in psychotherapy: Should clients battle their blues?