About Prize Beagle Recording

What's with the beagle?
Have you ever seen a beagle trailing something interesting? Attempting to escape a backyard? Trying to eat the trash? A picture of pragmatic, goal-oriented activity. It serves the beagle well, and is a pretty good approach to making records. I am also basically obsessed with paintings of snoopy on black velvet (a collection that's been growing for eight years). And I have joint custody of a beagle named Bailey who is delightful, despite being a fucking handful and the inspiration for the part above about eating trash. That's him in the left corner.

The Original Prize Beagle
Benscreek Nifty King was born in 1963 and became an AKC National Champion 13-Inch Beagle at the age of five. Along the way he won a number of regional awards in Pennsylvania in the 60s before retiring to become the stud he always knew he was. His mother was the excellently named FC Chippewa Sally and his father was FC West Pike Nifty (FC stands for Field Champion, an official AKC designation). King was raised by my great-grandfather, Howard Horner, a remarkable guy that lived to be 102 and was lucid until the day he departed. The studio name is also a tribute to him. I never met King, but I did get to play with his daughter Lucy when I was growing up.

Here's a picture of Howard and King and some of the many awards they won together. I have some of these trophies in the studio to remind me of them.

The Studio
Prize Beagle Recording features a 500 square foot treated live room with 20 foot ceilings. The room sounds spacious, but not overly live. We have an unfinished concrete basement room that's used for isolation, and as an alternate tracking room offering a more lively sound. The control room rounds out the facilities. It's been a recording space in one form or another for over 30 years, and has played host in its past incarnations to legends like Muddy Waters. In its current state, it's a bit of a throw back to the 70s with the wood and canvas interiors, but manages to be comfortable despite a distinct shortage of leather couches on the property.

Prize Beagle Staff
Is me, Adam Yoffe. I started engineering for Martin Atkins at The Mattress Factory, the in-house studio for Invisible Records, in 1996. Since the, I've operated a number of different studio setups out of various houses and borrowed spaces, working under the monikers Anti-loft, Dinette Recording, and the Seeley Avenue Home for Wayward Children. I'm a bassist and a drummer (formerly for Chicago junk-rockers Big Buildings and currently for Shot of Therapy). I received a BA in Music Theory and Composition in 1996, with a concentration in Electronic Music and 20th Century Composition. A full on-line CV is in the works.

My goal for Prize Beagle is to create affordable recordings made with care and creativity, as unique as the musicians themselves. I'm happy to work with artists in any capacity, from engineer to arranger to producer.