Parallel Roads ↠ Daisy Jones & The Six

track 001: freight train

TRACK ONE:
FREIGHT TRAIN

❝ freight train, freight train, run so fast
freight train, freight train, run so fast
please don't tell what train i'm on
they won't know what route i'm going ❞
— elizabeth cotten

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Born in 1948, Francesca Vestri grew up in Waterbury, Connecticut as the youngest and only girl of five children. Her father, Giovanni Vestri, was an Italian immigrant and her mother, Irene Vestri, was a half-Mexican native of New York. Francesca's childhood was filled with a breadth of musical influences.

INTERVIEWER: I guess just... start with your childhood, and how you got into music.

FRANCESCA: We're going right back to the beginning? Wow, okay...

Well, before anything, you have to understand my family was big and loud, and that's how it was all the time growing up. Just with the folks living in our house, you could never get a quiet moment. After my parents, there were four boys before you finally got to me, and you can bet that was a joy growing up with [Laughs] Then my dad's parents eventually moved over from Italy in '59 and stayed with us. So you can imagine it, right? All of this noise, all of this life.

When I was really young, my dad would sometimes get his mandolin or a guitar out, and he'd just start playing it. The rest of us would either play or sing along. And so we'd all just jam out in the living room, whatever songs that came to mind — folk, jazz, country, blues... and probably a lot of Sinatra and Dean Martin on my dad's part. I think that's how I learned that music could be salvation. I saw how much joy it could bring...

... So when that tradition kind of died between us, I was a little lost. Times got harder and my family got more stressed. There didn't seem to be time to sit around and share that anymore. And... kids can sense that more than people give them credit for. I still wanted that escape.

INTERVIEWER: So was that around the time you first picked up a guitar?

FRANCESCA: [Smiles] Yeah. Yeah, it was. I must've been about eleven or twelve...

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If the Vestri household could be boxed into a portrait, it would be painted with the boldest of colours, even if looks were deceiving. There were no velvet curtains, no lavish ceiling decorations or plush rugs. There was always something broken, shower had a mind of its own when it came to the temperature or pressure, and the evenings they sat in candlelight thanks to power outages were numerous. This one is no exception — but the brightest colours would still be used, even in the darkness.

     It's the people who bring it to life. A father, loud and proud as he talks with his work-worn hands. A mother, juggling the screaming demands of her children while she collects the dishes in the sink. An eldest son, Bruno, a few years into adulthood but still tied to his family out of dedication; he keeps a watchful eye on his younger brother, Tony, fourteen and turbulent with passion. There are the boisterous screams of twins and partners-in-crime, Elias and Sergio, wrestling for the umpteenth time to the point their parents have given up trying to stop them. Better to get it out of their system, they justify. A set of grandparents sit huddled on a couch, exchanging judgements in mumbled Italian.

And then there is Francesca.

     The quiet girl of eleven years sits at the kitchen table, legs dangling over the chair as she watches her mother at the sink. Her hands cling to the fabric of her hand-me-down dress from a cousin — forever a nuisance, since her brothers had no pretty frocks to lend her. Two tight braids of espresso brown hair sit on her shoulder blades, plaited quickly by her mother in the school rush that morning. Francesca bears witness to the endearing chaos around her like she does everyday, as though sitting at a pool's edge and dipping her toes in... not quite in the depths of it yet. She meanwhile feels surrounded by stronger, bolder personalities with booming voices and room-shaking laughs.