The Jas Obrecht Music Archive is essentially a two-man operation. Jas writes the entries, and Lawrence Lazare serves as webmaster. The archive grew out of their mutual love for music. 

About Jas Obrecht 

Jas grew up in the Detroit area. By second grade, he knew he wanted to become a writer. Inspired by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, he began playing guitar and writing songs in eighth grade. He attended the University of Detroit High School,  John Carroll University, and Ohio University. He moved to the San Francisco area in 1978 to become an editor for Guitar Player magazine.  His first major interview was with Eddie Van Halen, also doing his first interview. In all, he spent twenty years as an editor for Guitar Player. He has interviewed hundreds of musicians and worked as a freelancer for Rolling Stone, Living Blues, and many other publications here and abroad.

His books include Rollin’ and Tumblin’ : The Postwar Blues Guitarists and  My Son Jimi (Book), co-authored with James A. Hendrix. His favorites among the liner notes he’s written are Robert Johnson’s King of Delta Blues, Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark Was the Night, and John Lee Hooker’s 50 Years:John Lee Hooker Anthology. He also produced the Buckethead DVDs  Young Buckethead, Vol. 1 and Young Buckethead, Vol. 2 and his Acoustic Shards CD. These days, he lives near Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and daughter. You can reach him via email at jasobr@earthlink.net or via Facebook.

About Lawrence Lazare

Lawrence received his first record, “Meet The Beatles,” at age four and has been an obsessive music collector ever since. Raised in the quiet river town of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, as a teenager Lawrence lived with and cared for folk music legend Lee Hays. Stints at Berklee and Hampsire College followed along with years spent working on a communal farm. In the mid-’80s he moved to Bloomington, Indiana where he founded a music management and booking firm, working with artists such as Martin Simpson, Will Ackerman, and Alex deGrassi. In 1990 he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to work for Fleming and Associates. There he represented singer-songwriters including Ani DiFranco, Greg Brown, Dar Williams, Tom Paxton, and many others.

Seeing the Internet as a tool that would level the playing field for musicians and artists of all kinds, in 1995 Lawrence abandoned the music business and began building web sites. Since that time he has worked with both small non-profits as well as large corporations such as Borders. For the past nine years he has worked as a product manager for Thomson Reuters. Residing in Ann Arbor in a house full of string instruments, he is father to two teenagers and is married to sculptor Carrie Fonder. He produces the award-winning weekly podcast Broadcasting From Home and can be reached via Facebook or emailed at jasarchive@daddyo.com.