Jake Clemons Talks About Touring with Bruce Springsteen

Steve Adubato goes one-on-one with solo artist, Jake Clemons, about the influence of his late uncle, Clarence Clemons, and touring with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band.

6/15/17 #2050

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Hearts can sure get hard sometimes. I'm fighting now just to keep her mine. Sometimes you gotta fight against the rain. But love will never change. [music playing] That is Jake Clemons with the Jake Clemons Band. Yeah. That's my group. It is great to have you. Jake Clemons is a musician, singer, songwriter, and he's got a new CD out. It is called Fear & Love. How you doing? I'm doing great. I'm doing very well. Where did you just come in from you told me? Yeah, I just flew in from Montréal. Alright. And boy are my arms tired. [laughter] I'm sorry. [laughter] That was lame. Get out of here! You grew up loving music because? It's been in my family for, I don't know, centuries I guess. It's... it was the first language I spoke as a kid. So... How young? My dad was the Marine Corps Band director. You know, my... all of my relatives sing in the church choirs. So, I mean, from birth I suppose. Handsome blue tie there. Oh that's you? Oh. That's me. You always had it together. You know, I wanted to keep it, you know... I love it. [laughter] Love it. And Clarence Clemons your uncle? That's right. Introduced you to...? There he is. The big man. Yeah. Introduced you to... did he introduce you to saxophone? Yes he did. And maybe inadvertently. I don't know. I mean I should say I was familiar with the saxophone because of my dad's marching band career. But I didn't really understand, I guess, what the saxophone could mean until I saw Clarence play it. Yeah. 1988. It's so interesting, you... is it fair to say, Jake, that there really was no other direction you were gonna wind up going in other than music? Yeah, I'd say that's definitely the first thing. [laughter] I can say it's fair to say that because I tried a lot of other things. [laughter] What else? Jeez man. A lot of other things. I don't know. Music always felt like the most natural and it always came easy to me, it was the way I expressed myself. So I didn't really... What do you mean easy? I don't know. It's how it translated my life since I was a young kid. So it, like... speaking. Easy like speaking. You know. It's interesting. But a lot of instruments here. Because we see you coming in the clip that we see, you know, you're playing a guitar. Mm hmm. We see you playing a piano. I've seen you live. Right? Yeah. Playing saxophone. How many different instruments are we talking about? I don't know. I mean, my dad started me on piano. I told him I wanted to play saxophone, and he did..."