Taste Test: Jessye DeSilva offers up stunning tribute to ‘Jeannie Frances’
Queer folk artist walks the listener back through time for an astounding new song.
Welcome to Taste Test, a song/video review series of SubmitHub-only gemstones
Adolescence can be a violent, identity-wrecking hailstorm. We do are best to weather what may come our way, and if we’re lucky, we have someone with whom we connect and can push us forward. Queer folk tunesmith Jessye DeSilva walks the listener back through the past for an uplifting, yet terribly emotional, story-song of youth. “Jeannie Frances,” crusted in piano and guitar to supple effect, pays tribute to an old elementary school friend and unapologetically works the tear ducts into hyper-drive in gushing waterfalls. “Oh, Jeannie Frances don’t you cry / One day your heart will open wide, and that harsh wind will help you fly,” sings DeSilva, an unmistakable tenor winding up with both melancholy and silvering hope. DeSilva evokes a chest-ripping emotion that hovers inches above the ground, pouring forth the kind of wellspring folk music rarely witnesses.
“Jeannie Frances” is lifted from DeSilva’s debut EP, Hoarfrost and Crocus Shoots, out everywhere now.
Listen below:
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