This is yet another fine, new single from Jim, showing all his sides. It's more evidence for me that he’s one of the best.

He was kind enough to answer some questions for me, and also include a scoop.

Andrea Weiss: Houston Street is real New York City street. Tell us a little about it and how it relates to the song.

Jim Basnight: I lived there for a month or so in 1977, when the late Lizzie Mercier (Descloux) and Michele Estaban, two rock and roll kids from France who were in NY to do journalism and generally hang out with folks from the exciting CBGB's, Max's, downtown music scene, in that neighborhood. Their loft was on Houston and Broadway. That was my first exposure to that street. When I came back to NYC in 1980, Houston had become a bit dicier, with lots of bums, hookers, and various hustlers. For a good while I lived on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd  Avenues during that second stay in NYC as an adult, from late 1980 until early 1984, about half a mile north. I wrote the song years later in the early 90's, based on recollections from the latter time frame.

Even though there were tons of streets and neighborhoods at that time, which were similarly yoked, including the addition of lots of clinically insane folks living in refrigerator boxes and the like after the Reagan administration emptied out the mental hospitals, I chose "Houston Street" for two reasons: It was the demarcations line on the east side of Lower Manhattan between the East Village, which east of Avenue A was rather dangerous, and the Lower East Side, which was even more so. It was sort of a tightrope, where your demeanor and resolve had better be convincing, to avoid being perceived as prey or a threat to the desperately poor, criminally insane, the addicted and the enforcers of the underworld. The other reason is because it sounded good with the melody. Songwriter tricks...LOL

AW: It’s a really gritty punk rock song, which I like. Is that how the street was when the song was written?

JB: We do it more like a funk rock song now. We'll likely do a live album someday, to showcase some of the better reworked songs of mine and uniquely interpreted covers. It's likely it'll be included. It was how NYC was then and when I was there in 1977, just different, as new conditions came and went. The crack epidemic also brought a lot of insanity and street danger. I saw that in its glory as well in 1982-84. If Houston Street was the only NYC street like that, the place would have been paradise. It was also incredibly wonderful. The best and the worst, living together in the dissonant harmony that great NY rock and roll artists like Lou Reed, Johnny Thunders, the Ramones, and Alan Vega have captured in their musical beings. I can only pretend to own that power, though I will say I've been closer to it than most.

AW: "Blue Moon Heart" is a bluesy rocker. What’s it about?

JB: It’s a song I co-wrote with Joey Alkes, who also co-wrote "Million Miles Away" and a few other gems by the Plimsouls, as well as tunes with Paul Collins and, coincidentally, British Blues pioneer Alexis Corner (I wish I'd had a chance to talk to him for my "Sonny Boy Williamson" research, before he passed). It was Joey's idea, but it struck a chord in me, because of my dad. In my early years in Seattle in the early 60's, my dad would go to the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle's U-District. I was not able to join him at age 6-18 (when he got sober), but he brought that culture home with him. My dad, who kicked me out of the house at 18, was an alcoholic, but he also always was there and willing to answer questions. Millions of questions. It probably caused me a lot of problems in life, but it was also a blessing in retrospect. My dad was smart. He had over 400 college credits and spoke multiple languages. He hung out with a colorful cast of characters, who could best be described as a wide-ranging collection of freaks, from the generation just older than the hippies. My mom enabled him, but like the family band of Merle Haggard's 1971 epic "Daddy Frank," they stood together. So, the song means something different to me, which I didn't focus on in a literal sense, as I did in "Houston Street." For me the song means, I may be blue, but in my heart, by the light of the moon, that inner commitment my family showed me will help me live in the present and maintain hope for the future. I hope that makes sense. Additionally, the Blue Moon is known in Seattle history as the center of the Beatniks in Seattle and the early hippies. It maintained some of that personality into the punk era too. I hope this answers your question.

AW: It does. Thank you.

So many of your songs are a little bit blues and a little bit punk. Do you like to emphasize both equally?

JB: My stuff is rock and roll, which is amplified blues, with a few other flavors mixed onto that basic canvas, or blueprint if you will. Punk is just rock and roll. It's hard for me to claim that a subgenre like punk, alternative (the ultimate attempt to differentiate from rock unsuccessfully), psychedelic, metal, rockabilly, power pop, surf, or what have you, is legitimately anything other than rock and roll, which at its core is built from building blocks straight from blues.

Electric Blues was incredibly punk, if your definition of punk is rebellious, irreverent and outrageous. In 1941, the most punk thing around was King Biscuit Time, where "Sonny Boy" led a blues band with an electric guitar and kit drums (both brand new to American Roots Music), while singing the blues and leading the band with his harmonica on the radio airwaves. Broadcast media itself was something above the perceived realm of the 20th Century Mississippi Delta field slaves who performed blues while maintaining their profile as farm laborers, or risking chain gangs, torture, or worse. That took more guts than the unruliest punk of the modern era.

AW: What comes after this album?

JB: I’m going to break some news for your 'zine. My next release is going to be mastered this coming week. It's a combination of tracks from my earliest output of tunes and tracks with the first version of the Moberlys and other early works.

Here's the track listing (with songwriting credits), which to now hasn't been published:

“Last Night” (Basnight)

“Leave the Past Behind” (Basnight)

“Blow Your Life Away” (Basnight)

"I Return” (Basnight/Neil Berman)

“You Know I Know” (Basnight)

“Sexteen” (Basnight)

“Live in the Sun” (Basnight)

“Country Fair” (Basnight/Dan Fisher)

“Give Me Peace” (Basnight)

“She Got Fxxxed” (Basnight)

“I Trust You” (Basnight) 

“We'll Always be in Love” (Basnight/Greg Carriere)

“Bebe Gonna Let You Down” (Basnight)

“Show Who You Are” (Basnight) 

“Lonesome Crying Sigh” (Basnight)

"In Love with You” (Basnight) 

“Don't Fall into Darkness” (Basnight)

“Love Is Beautiful” (Basnight)

“Make a Baby” (Basnight/Dan Fisher)

“I Want You” (Basnight)