Nicholas Schurman
When I try to connect with Nicholas Schurman on a weekday afternoon, he misses my call because he’s busy “mowing crop circles” in his lawn. “I’ve long found that if I make a chore like mowing the grass fun by doing something really stupid with it, I look forward to it,” he tells me the next day.
Schurman runs East Side event space Soft Junk. Thanks to colorful psychedelic artwork by local artist Brett Douglas Hunter on its interior and an outsized sign reading “HOWDYWOOD” near its exterior, Soft Junk feels like a Pee-wee’s Playhouse for adult rock ’n’ rollers. For the past several years, the space — tucked away at the back of 919 Studios on Gallatin Avenue — has served as a friendly locale for rock shows, comedy nights, flea markets, swap meets and, more recently, “Howdywood red carpet film screenings,” like a recent Dancing Outlaw/American Movie double feature. He’s got a recording studio upstairs and is set up to track analog audio and video for every show, with help from his sound and tech guys Joe and Jack Tellmann — a pair of brothers who make Schurman “feel like I’m making Wayne’s World and they’re the camera dudes.”
“I love all the weird shit,” Schurman says. “When people come up with a cool, weird idea — that’s usually what my goal is, to try that out.”
Some of Schurman’s far-out ideas include, for instance, filling the space with available work by local artist Kevin Guthrie (“and like, you could take like a pamphlet from the wall and everything in there could be for sale”), or using cassette duplicators to send attendees home with analog recordings from that night’s show. Or buying enough red carpet to stretch from his front door all the way to Gallatin Avenue. For now, upcoming summer shows at Soft Junk will include a May 29 album release from standout local folk artist Annie Williams and a June 27 appearance from New Orleans legends Quintron and Miss Pussycat.
Past that, says Schurman, stay tuned to his Instagram account (@soft__junk).
Nicholas Schurman
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