Feb. 5, 2015, Austin, Texas – The Grassy Knoll, aka Nolan “Bob” Green the fearless ‘90s producer who effortlessly merged rock, jazz and electronics into music that Salon described as “groundbreaking and futuristic,” returns with his first new album in twelve years, Electric Verdeland, Vol. 1, on March 17 via Electric Verde Records.

“I have to say, I’m ecstatic at having made this new record. I can’t wait for people to hear it,” says The Grassy Knoll’s Nolan “Bob” Green. “One of the spurs to reanimating The Grassy Knoll was getting an e-mail from Vernon [Reid, who guests on Electric Verdeland, Vol. 1], who told me that he had gone back to the ‘90s albums and was inspired by them.  I thought back to when I was offered an opening slot on The Jesus Lizard reunion tour and I turned it down, being more or less out of music as the time.  I thought ‘Do I want to say “no” again?”

In the late 1990s, The Grassy Knoll was on the leading edge of a new kind of music, a darkly artful mix of the electric and the organic, of digital sampling and analog virtuosity. It was the sound of rock, jazz and electronica melded into a sometimes sly, sometimes seething and always forward-minded infusion.Billboard magazine described those early albums on Nettwerk and Antilles/Verve as “A soundtrack for the conspiracy theory in your mind, The Grassy Knoll fuses the technical terrorism of the Bomb Squad with the organic impact of Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson – industrial-strength beats vying with serpentine sax solos, ambient-noir atmospheres cloaking coiled aggression... Cut-and-paste style, it effectively blurs the line between Birdland and clubland.” The albums featured such edgy instrumental stars as Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, avant-jazz saxophonist Ellery Eskelin and genre-blind violinist Carla Kihlstedt. And tastemakers from Shirley Manson of Garbage to guitarist Vernon Reid of Living Colour were among the faithful, singing the praises of albums The Grassy Knoll (1994), Positive (1996) and III(1998), as well as new-century addendum Short Stories (2003). Aside from an occasional remix and soundtrack inclusion, The Grassy Knoll went dormant for the decade after that, as life challenges took precedence.

Along with Green on bass guitar and various other tools, the album’s instrumentalists come from far-flung genres and geography, including guitarist Vernon Reid, trumpeter Chris Grady and keyboardist Dave Depper, as well as such Austin luminaries as Brad Houser on baritone saxophone and bass clarinet, Jesse Dayton on guitar, Chris Forshage on trumpet, Brian Batch on violin and Jeff Johnston on musical saw. Also, for the first time on a record by The Grassy Knoll, there are featured vocalists: Jon Dee Graham (the only three-time inductee to the Austin Music Hall of Fame), Adam Sultan of Poi Dog Pondering, Ann Courtney of Mother Feather, Francine Thirteen, Laura Scarborough and James Rotondi of Roto’s Magic Act. Along with Graham, several of these singers are also Green’s fellow Austin residents: Sultan, Thirteen and Scarborough.

The starry guest array attests to the resonance of The Grassy Knoll’s music over the years. Vernon Reid – ranked No. 66 on the Rolling Stone list of Top 100 Guitarists of All Time – says: “The Grassy Knoll was in a group of artists that helped define the ’90s music scene outside of hard rock, metal and grunge. The Grassy Knoll, with its quirky, off-kilter, breakbeat funk, was of a piece with the roots of trip-hop, like Portishead, MC 900-Foot Jesus, The Goats, My Bloody Valentine. To me, Bob Green is a genre-twisting, outside-the-corral genius.”

Electric Verdeland, Vol. track list:

1. The Kids Want A Little Action
2. Car In Reverse
3. Headlong Into The Sun
4. Voluptuous Misery
5. Into Your Mind
6. Rain Rain Down
7. The Art of Fear
8. The Definitive Manifesto For Handling Haters
9. The Camera Is On You
10. The Sympathetic Seducer
11. Something Together