profile story

Alison Neubauer
Jrn 400
Profile story
1922

Mark Rubel arrived at Rosfest in Phoenixville, Pa. to find this annual progressive rock festival behind schedule by 3 hours. Despite his delayed flight, he hadn’t missed anything except for a long line of angry fans and workers waiting for the lighting man to show up. Star Castle, a progressive rock band from the 1970’s, were the headliners supporting the album Gary Strater, musician, worked on for ten years. Strater died of Pancreatic cancer 3 weeks after he finished recording it 2004. Rubel promised Strater he would help him finish and put out the record. A promise that by 2007, he kept. Now Rubel was front row at the concert in support of his best friend’s last album. Things did not go as smoothly as planned. The lighting man, who was bringing necessary equipment to run the show, was 3 hours late.
“The sound people were cool, the recording people were cool, the lighting people were good and the lighting guy was drunk,” said Rubel. The light show is an important part of a progressive rock concert. After trying to communicate with him, Rubel just gave up realizing that this man could not understand how he wanted the light show to be.
“They go on. The band is fine, the P.A. is fine, everything sounds great and it’s the worst lighting show in the world,” said Rubel, but they just dealt with it until the man started disrupting the performance.
“So they start to play this song, nice, calm acoustic guitars and stuff and I hear this sound from the lighting guy. He’s singing. Wait, he’s chanting. No, he’s swearing. He’s decided he’s angry at the band. So he’s yelling profanities over the music and throwing things at the band while they are playing. And I’m thinking this is the part of the show where I have to vault over the amps and wrestle this guy to the ground and end up on You Tube,” said Rubel. He didn’t have to do that because 8 cops came and arrested the lighting man on stage while the band continued to play. That put an end to the light show.
“That’s one of my favorite stories and I have a million others,” said Rubel.
Soft yellow light gently falls over antique microphones, new and old instruments, recording magazines, records, an analogue sound board, large shelves holding books, magazines and music and a large variety and quantity of sound equipment that has been collected over the years, decorating Mark Rubel’s recording studio on Taylor St. in Champaign. Pogo Studio has been around for twenty-five years. It’s couches, warmth, original equipment, comfort, and homeliness contrasts the majority of studios which are usually “frigid, air conditioned and just feel like outer space,” said Rubel. He is the chief engineer, the studio owner, the studio president, an accountant, a producer, a full time teacher at Eastern University, and a part time teacher at Parkland College. He writes articles for recording magazines, plays bass in a rock band, and is involved with many panels, committees and organizations. He has run art councils, been a booking agent, works as an expert witness for law firms and trials, is working on a new curriculum for music business and audio technology at Eastern and is on the producers committee for the Grammy’s. His free time is filled with work.
“I like to hang out with my wife on the rare occasion that I get to see her and the cats. And you know, go out and eat and occasionally see friends and family. But it’s a very hard working lifestyle and I’m really working 7 days a week, eighteen to nineteen hours a day, day in and day out, year in and year out. I don’t take vacations. I don’t have hobbies, but it’s something that happens when your passion is your living,” said Rubel.
Fifty years ago in Princeton, N.J. Rubel was born into a world of creativity. A majority of his time was spent in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. where he sticks close to his roots to this day. His father was a mathematician at the University of Illinois, his mother was a journalist from Denmark, his sister is a painter and graphic artist, his wife is an artist and animal rights worker and his half brother is a TV producer.
“I haven’t grown up but I’ve gotten older mostly in Champaign-Urbana,” said Rubel. His father went on sabbatical so they lived in France for a year when Rubel was 8. There he learned French almost fluently. They spent another year in New York, one back in New Jersey, a summer in California, a summer in Montreal, and lived briefly in Holland and Denmark. After graduating from University high school he got an English literature degree from the University of Illinois in 1979. Since he was twelve years old Rubel has been a musician, playing the bass guitar.
“I started this silly band called Captain Rat and the Blind Rivets as a joke in 1980 and we decided to keep doing it as long as it’s fun. It’s been almost thirty years and it’s still really fun,” said Rubel. “When you start a band when your twenty-two you don’t expect to be in the band long enough for the members to become grandfathers.” Captain Rat and the Blind Rivets just booked their annual gig at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. They used to play 200 gigs a year but now they play about once a week.
Being an audio engineer hadn’t even crossed his mind as a possible career until he ran across a guy who was getting a team to put his studio back together and run it. Rubel had previously been working as a manager of this local arts council but when the offer to build the studio arose, he took advantage of it. The ramshackle white house sat twenty feet from active train tracks and for one hundred dollars a month, they had a studio.
“We took the minimal equipment that we had, wired it together and called it a studio,” said Rubel. “The 6 or 8 others involved were mostly electrical engineers that had jobs. I was a liberal arts guy and didn’t. I was playing in the silly rock band so I got elected to sit behind the council and run the studio.”
Having no training in audio engineering, Rubel learned everything by doing it or from reading about it. In 1983 he left this studio to start Pogo Studios in the same place it is today. He named the studio after his dog. Since then he has worked with mostly regional and local bands but also does projects for relatively well known people and major labels. He has recorded musicians such as Alison Krauss, Adrian Blue, Rascal Flatts, Ludacris, and Fall Out Boy. He produced Hum for RCA Records, Poster Children for Warner Reprise, Menthol for Capitol Records, various projects for Sony Records, the music for the 1988 Olympics and Jay Bennett from Wilco. He did live sound for Toby Twining so he was able to travel.
“I really like being able to travel and see other places. That seems to be where a lot of the memorable times come from. All these Bahamas gigs are great. That’s my vacation actually. I think if I had time and money to do it I would never go to a fancy resort with a casino. But this way I can rationalize it, I’m being paid. I have to be there, so I’m getting better at learning to be lazy,” said Rubel.
Aside from running the studio and being an audio engineer, Rubel is a teacher at Parkland College and Eastern University. He is finishing building a new studio and creating a new curriculum for a music business and audio technology program at Eastern. Dr. Tim Schirmer, a professor and the program director for music at Parkland, became friends with and boss of Rubel when he met him at Parkland in 1987. Rubel has recorded most of the projects Schirmer has done.
“He is wonderful, pleasant, helpful, meticulous, and a patient person interested in the world at large, and he is an excellent engineer and musician,” said Schirmer. “He has a real knack for making a tense environment very relaxed and always keeps his focus on getting the best result possible. He is a very nice guy.” Rubel has been at Parkland for 22 years.
The first word that comes to Stephen Fonzo’s mind when he thinks of Rubel is “nice“. Considerate, open-minded, talented and always busy follow. Fonzo is the media training advisor for the Independent Media Center in Urbana and read about Rubel before moving to Champaign from Virginia in 2006. Fonzo was transitioning to a new town. Rubel was from Champaign, knew everyone, helps the IMC by loaning them equipment and helped Fonzo meet people.
“That’s an aspect I’ve always been interested in, community. I’m kind of defined by a series of communities. I guess one of the things I’ve done that’s unusual for people in my area is I’ve stayed in a small Midwestern town and had a whole career staying in the town I originated from,” said Rubel. According to Rubel, he tries to encourage and help the musicians, advise, lend gear, help with WFT and IMC and anybody else. He is also part of a community of engineers/producers.
Rubel attends the annual Tape Op conference where engineers and producers get together. He meets many people from different places there. Greg Norman, recording engineer and electrical technician at Electrical Studios in Chicago, is one of those people. Rubel has also recorded sessions at Electrical Studio and stops by whenever he is in Chicago.
“He always has a new story to talk about but doesn’t waste time or air on small talk. He genuinely pays attention to people and is thoughtful in what he does and how he responds to people,” said Norman.
After recording with him and seeing Rubel at major recording events, Norman learned that Rubel’s creativity and layed back personality contributes to the positive mood in a recording session but also that he doesn’t steer the session.
“He allows people to do their own thing and he gets the best out of that,” said Norman. Norman visits Rubel whenever he is in Champaign.
“It’s really important for there to be a studio like Pogo in Champaign-Urbana. He has a variety of very nice equipment and he knows how to use them. It’s a place where people can record the old way with really good microphones, amplifiers and the space designed,” said Fonzo. “It’s an inspiring place.”
Inspired by his parents, Les Paul, Steve Albini, artists, musicians and writers, Rubel became a well known producer and engineer, instead of enlisting in the Army, with few regrets. If he has time he wants to get MBA, possibly go to law school, write a couple books, and travel all while keeping the studio running.
“If I had realized I was going to be doing this I would have wanted more training, taken more music theory, studied architectural acoustics, physics of acoustics, music history, studied abroad and researched. I would have been more hands on, doing stuff earlier, and been more self promoting earlier. You have to inspire confidence in people by having confidence in yourself. I would have taken more opportunities that came along. I should have taken every gig that came along,” said Rubel. “One thing I don’t regret is that I’ve stayed here. It’s been great.”

Sources
Mark Rubel
217-351-8155
pogostudio@sbcglobal.net

Tim Schirmer
217-373-3740
Tschirmer@parkland.edu

Greg Norman
773-539-2555
Greg@electrical.com

Stephen Fonzo
502-475-9289
fonzo.stephen@gmail.com