Mark Rubel (seated) and Jeff Evans, Tim Vear wearing the Captain’s hat, and Roger Prillaman (standing left to right)
The University of Illinois Library’s Sousa Archives and Center for American Music acquired the Pogo Studio Audio Recordings and Business Records on December 20, 2013, and the Sasha Rubel and Pogo Studio Photographs and Papers on January 17, 2014. The two new collections consist of 85 cubic feet of original audio recordings, session logs, track sheets, photographs, and artifacts documenting the nearly thirty-year legacy of Pogo Studio and its impact on Urbana-Champaign’s local music scene. The collections include recordings of University of Illinois, Eastern Illinois University, and Parkland College ensembles and faculty (e.g., the Xtension Chords, Tom Turino, Salvatore Martirano, and Paul Kotheimer) and local artists and bands with national careers (e.g., Adrian Belew, Alison Krauss, Hum, Menthol, Shiner, Starcastle, and Vertebrats). In addition there are recordings produced by other local studios that eventually went out of business (e.g., Faithful Sound, Creative Audio, and Silver Dollar Studios), and these were eventually transferred to Pogo Studio. Work on the arrangement and description of these collections will begin in late spring, and the collections should be fully processed and available for research by September 2014. A new exhibit documenting the legacy of this unique recording studio, “Pogo Studio: Capturing the Sounds of the Urbana-Champaign Music Scene 1985-2014,” is scheduled to open at the Sousa Archives on July 1, 2014. For more information on this upcoming exhibition and access to these collections, email the director of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at sousa@illinois.edu.