Harris Wittels, a co-executive producer of Parks and Recreation and the creator of the popular Analyze Phish podcast, passed away at his Los Angeles home earlier today. He was 30.

A gifted writer and comedian, Wittels got his start working on the Sarah Silverman Program. He joined Parks and Recreation during its second season and rose to his current post of co-executive producer. Wittels continued to write for the popular NBC sitcom as he moved through the ranks, helping develop the character of Tom Haverford portrayed by Aziz Ansari and providing many of the series’ technological cultural references. In addition to his behind the scenes roles, Wittels occasionally appeared on the program as Harris, an animal control employee who often wore Phish T-shirts.

Wittels was a passionate music fan with a particular interested in Phish, the Grateful Dead and the larger jamband scene. He blossomed into something of a celebrity Phish fan after launching the comedy podcast Analyze Phish, where he tried to get Comedy Bang Bang star Scott Aukerman into The Vermont Quartet. Wittels regularly slid Phish references into Parks and Rec.

“I asked Scott for a list of his favorite bands, and he said Rolling Stones and Talking Heads and I found some covers,” Wittels reflected of his podcast’s early days. “I think I played him ‘Loving Cup,’ ‘Crosseyed and Painless’ and then that didn’t really take with him. He was like, ‘This is just like listening to shitty versions of the songs.’ I said, ‘Ignore the first three minutes and listen to the ‘Crosseyed’ jam.’ He actually kind of liked the jams and could get into them . By episode three I played him a ‘Hood’ jam and ‘Slave’ jam and he said, ‘Yeah I like this.’”

He contributed a loving, funny essay to Phish as part of Relix ’s own 40th anniversary issue last winter and moonlighted as a musician.

“I was in a jamband called Pralines and Dicks and we played at Last Concert [in Texas] every Wednesday on the jamband night,” Wittels told Relix in 2013. “We were pretty not great in hindsight. We just really liked Phish and String Cheese, and we were like, ‘Let’s start a band.’ We would even do the same covers as Phish, ‘Good Times Bad Times,’ ‘2001‘…My first show was September 25, ‘99 in at the Woodlands in Houston. I was literally a fan since that night. It was the most amazing concert experience of my life. It wasn’t even that great of a show but even a regular Phish show especially pre-hiatus is gonna be better than anything else you see.”

Wittels also created of the catchphrase “humblebrag.” Originally a Twitter feed (@Humblebrag, aka the art of false modesty), “humblebrag” blossomed into both a book in 2012 and recently even an entry in the Oxford Dictionary. He also worked on Eastbound & Down, Secret Girlfriend and the various MTV award shows and appeared on Comedy Bang Bang.

“I am not allowed to play Phish in the Parks writer room anymore,” Wittles joked. “But I am allowed to play them in my private office and turn it up as loud as I want. I work with Greg Daniels, who is one of the funniest comedy writers out there—he wrote on Seinfeld, Saturday Night Live and created the American Office —and I was like, ‘I am going to introduce him to Phish and that will be his gift.’ So I gave him a show and he was like, ‘Yeah, I kind of like it’ but he didn’t get into it.”

“The most fun ever is getting to play music with your friends,” he told Relix. “It’s much less pressure than doing stand-up, where you are onstage and have to talk non-stop and make people laugh. It’s fun to sit back and hit some drums.”