Biography

Jeffrey Crawford "Lazlow" Jones (born September 4, 1973) is an American writer, producer, director, voice actor, and radio announcer. He is best known for his time as co-chair of the Rockstar Games Production Department, responsible for in-game creative audio and video content, working directly for and writing with Rockstar co-founder and Head of Creative Dan Houser. During his career at Rockstar Games his primary responsibilities were as a director, producer and writer for the Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne, Bully, and Midnight Club series, as well as the voice over director for Manhunt 2, and was part of Rockstar's production team for The Warriors and L.A. Noire, the latter of which he also contributed some writing to. Lazlow also hosted his own real-life radio shows: Lazlow's Technofile, which for a time was syndicated on radio stations across the US in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and The Lazlow Show, which began airing on New York City's K-Rock in 2005 before moving to the Opie & Anthony Channel (branded at the time as The Virus) as part of the channel's Saturday Night Virus lineup on XM Satellite Radio in 2006; in 2009, XM and Sirius Satellite Radio merged to become the single entity known as SiriusXM. Due to the merger and a resulting disagreement in regards to the show's budget, it eventually began airing from the Long Island basement studio (known amongst fans as "The Compound") of then-Opie & Anthony Show co-host Anthony Cumia. The Lazlow Show officially ran from 2005 to 2010 on a mostly irregular schedule, at times with many months passing between episodes due to Lazlow's increasingly heavy workload at Rockstar. Overall, 52 episodes of The Lazlow Show were broadcast live over the course of ten years. Behind the scenes, Lazlow was one of the writers of the game's script, providing political and cultural satire on the radio, and writing dialogue for street NPCs. Lazlow arranged voice cameos in the Grand Theft Auto games for several key figures, many of whom are real-life friends of his, such as Reed Tucker, Wayne "Big Wayne" Oliver, Fred Armisen, Frank Chavez, Anthony Cumia, Patrice O'Neal, Bill Burr, Wil Wheaton, Gregg "Opie" Hughes, Jim Norton, Sam Roberts, Joe DeRosa, Robert Kelly, Jim Florentine, Club Soda Kenny, and Couzin Ed, who would eventually join Rockstar as a full-time employee, and even members of his own family (for example, his father can be heard as the caller who mentions Gardening with Maurice on Chatterbox FM). He even arranged voice cameos for members of the hacker magazine "2600: The Hacker Quarterly", including Emmanuel Goldstein, Bernie S., and Kevin Mitnick. In April 2020, Lazlow resigned from Rockstar Games during the COVID-19 pandemic to care for his sister and family. Exactly a year later, Lazlow joined Dan Houser's next company, Absurd Ventures.