Little ‘Big Man’

Slowly, methodically, Jake Clemons stacks the dirty dishes. Over the top one, he crosses the knives and forks just so. Then with one hand, he brushes the crumbs off the table and into his cupped palm.

He's hard to miss inside the Handsome Biscuit, a small, boxy Norfolk restaurant that serves everything from fried chicken to wilted greens, all on a biscuit.

It's unseasonably warm on this fall day, nearly 80 degrees, and Clemons, a lean, broad-shouldered guy at almost 6-foot-3, looks like the rock star he's trying to become.

He's dressed head to toe in black, with fitted jeans that sit below the waist and leather riding boots. His dandelion bloom of an Afro is the orangey hue of a photo negative.

When Jake isn't on the road playing saxophone with Bruce Springsteen, the rock legend who befriended and employed his saxophone-playing uncle, Clarence Clemons, for nearly 40 years, the 33-year-old Virginia Beach musician makes it a point to visit the Handsome Biscuit, one of his favorite haunts.

With the sound system blaring a mix of soft rock and early hip- hop classics and with customers filing in and out, the restaurant has become too busy and noisy for chatting. But before he leaves, Jake insists on busing the table.

Even on the road, he says he cleans his hotel room.

"This is what you do when you grow up with a Marine as your dad," Jake says, taking the dishes and utensils to the counter. "You leave things better than you found them."

You also pay close attention to details, which helps Jake when he's onstage with Springsteen, who's notorious for changing the set list night after night, often in the moment.

Since replacing his uncle in the E Street Band just months after Clarence's death in 2011, Jake has had to be more meticulous and engaged than at any other time in his 10 years as a working musician. He's also very aware of the seemingly hallowed space he's filling in the E Street Band.

"You have to understand," Springsteen told Jake, "when you blow that sax onstage with us, people won't compare you to Clarence on the last tour. They'll compare you to their memory of Clarence, to their idea of Clarence."

"The Big Man," as his uncle was affectionately called, was too proud to give up his place in the E Street Band. Even in unrelenting pain from a worn-out body, he went on the road to play with his friend, "The Boss."

But Clarence knew that his absence was inevitable and that his music-obsessed nephew, who adored him, was the only one who should step in after he was gone.

This year has been something of a breakout year for Jake Clemons, with write-ups in Billboard, Rolling Stone and Spin magazines. His new EP, "Embracing Light," was released this month.

Although he's been making music, an earnest mix of alt-rock, folk and soul, and touring the United States and Europe as an indie artist for most of his adult life, Jake's profile rocketed when he joined the E Street Band early last year.

Of course it would. Spring-steen is one of the most beloved and celebrated musicians of his generation, and the E Street Band has long been a part of the almost-mythic legend that surrounds him.

Springsteen's friendship with Clarence - a brotherly bond forever captured in the cover shot of "Born to Run," the 1975 star-making album - seemed to embody the "ebony and ivory" harmony Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder once sang about, an openly affectionate relationship that transcended ethnic backgrounds.

Clarence and Springsteen laughed onstage as though the two were sharing a private joke. They often hugged, and kissed.

And it wasn't all just for show. The relationship between them was genuine, Jake says.

One of Jake's earliest memories, around age 5, is being in Maui with his uncle and the rock superstar. Jake, his family and the E Street Band were all visiting the island for the christening of Clarence's son. Jake remembers lots of laughter, Springsteen relaxing on the beach and everyone having a good time at a luau.

"They were literally family to me," says Jake, settling in at an outdoor table at Cafe Stella, about a mile or two away from the busy Handsome Biscuit.

"I didn't even know about fame. So were they authentic? Of course they were, because Bruce and Clarence, they were my family."

Jake didn't see Clarence much when he was growing up.

"When I saw him, he was often very tired. He slept all day," Jake says between sips of coffee. "I was like, 'Why are you so tired?' I get it now."

His uncle was often on the road with Springsteen or blowing his sax behind the likes of Aretha Franklin. Jake's family - including his father, Clarence's younger brother, who was a band director in the Marine Corps; his mother, who worked for an insurance company; and his four siblings - moved around a lot during his father's time in the Marines.

The family settled in Virginia Beach when Jake was 9, and he's still based there.

These days, though, he's hardly ever home.

Jake attended the Governor's School for the Arts in Norfolk and graduated from Tallwood High School in Virginia Beach.

He remembers hanging out with Chad Hugo of the Neptunes; Kenna Zemedkun, the Grammy-nominated alt-pop singer known as Kenna; and the Thornton brothers, Gene and Terrence, who became the rap duo Clipse.

"We were just goofing off, playing football, hanging out," Jake says. "I remember Chad recording songs in his bedroom, but we were just kids, you know, and didn't know there was this greatness right here in Virginia Beach."

During those years, Jake nurtured his love for music mostly in the classroom. At home, his father, a devoutly religious man, ran the house much in the way his father had: gospel was the only music allowed.

"I wasn't raised with a broad perspective of music. It was mostly Marine band music or gospel music, which is amazing," Jake says. "I'm not disappointed in being introduced to it at all. I mean, Shirley Caesar and Andrae Crouch? That's very musical."

But once Jake discovered rock, sanctified shouts for Jesus fell by the wayside. That was in March 1988, when the family briefly lived in North Carolina. The Clemons family went to see "Uncle Bruce" and Uncle Clarence on Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love" tour.

That was the night when Jake realized that there was something significant about the guys he had frolicked with in Hawaii a few years before.

"I remember it being the loudest thing I'd ever experienced and not knowing what was going on," Jake says. "They were all essentially uncles - Bruce, Clarence, the whole band. They had a very inclusive sense of family.

"It took me a long time to get what Bruce and Clarence meant in the sense of popular culture and history. But at the show, when Clarence came out, the place erupted. I still saw him as my uncle. But the star was the saxophone. I wanted to play after that."

After high school, Jake worked as a bouncer at clubs in Virginia Beach. He never left home without his saxophone.

Two weeks after his graduation, at a nightspot in Virginia Beach, the Israelites, a reggae band, was playing. Jake left his security post in the front of the club and jammed with the group onstage. At the end of the night, he was asked to join the guys on the road, and Jake packed his bags and headed out West with them.

He played with the Israelites in L.A. for several months before moving to Salt Lake City to blow his horn in another band. Jake eventually ended up back in Hampton Roads around 2002, where he was a member of two bands, Sky's the Limit and Mae.

After playing in Mae for a year and a half, he got a call from a producer of "One Cubed," a faith-based, youth-culture show that aired in the early morning hours on ABC Family. Jake hosted the program, which was filmed at various locations, for five seasons.

He enjoyed the gig, but he left it in 2007, after Clarence called him out of the blue to join him on the road. Around that time, Clarence "had had every surgery possible," Jake says.

"He was a little bit older. He'd had triple hip replacement, a pacemaker, double knee replacements. He was concerned about his well- being. I thought hard about it, but I called the producer of the show.

"Clarence needed me."

Jake always felt a bond with his free-spirited uncle. His first public performance was playing saxophone alongside Clarence at President Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration. As Jake became a man, his connection with Clarence deepened.

"It probably goes without saying at this point that my relationship to Clarence was more significant than with my father," Jake says. "My dad has a very regimented background, with the military and musical experience. My dad didn't grow up to be trained to push any boundaries. That was different to my own personal nature. With Clarence, the way that he was open to life - we remained very close."

Jake's father was unavailable for an interview.

In 2008, when Clarence married for the fifth time, he asked Jake to be his best man. On the road with the E Street Band, Jake was there mostly as moral support for his uncle.

After a show, the two would go back to Clarence's hotel room, watch YouTube videos and talk for hours. Several times, Jake played with the band in concert, and he absorbed everything around him, particularly the almost telepathic chemistry among the E Street members.

Jake maintained his own band and toured mostly in Europe between dates with Clarence. In the late spring of 2011, he was wrapping up a short tour in Dublin when he received a message that Clarence had suffered a stroke.

Jake got on the first plane to Florida, where Clarence lived. Jake and his family were with Clarence a week before he died on June 18, 2011, from complications of the stroke. He was 69.

"It wasn't that I just lost my saxophone-playing uncle," Jake says and pauses for a moment.

Then he fixes his gaze straight ahead, looking at nothing in particular.

"He was a voice in my life. He was the person I called when I was excited about something in my life. He was the person I'd call when I was broken. He was the person I would call for advice or just to talk to. He was always accessible for me. That was the brunt of what I lost.

"The musical side of things? That wasn't the important thing to address. I'd lost relatives before, but Clarence, he was close."

Joining the E Street Band happened organically, Jake says. Springsteen's main concern was keeping the chemistry somehow intact. Jake, of course, wanted to keep things at least as good as he found them.

"Those guys aren't together just because they're great musicians," Jake says.

"They share a common vibe, a common nature at their core, and they happen to be great musicians. That element I appreciate. It made the conversation to join the band easy to have. I'm not the greatest saxophone player in the world, but it's something about that chemistry that is important."

The first date on Spring-steen's "Wrecking Ball" tour was March 9, 2012, at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, N.Y. It was the first time Springsteen and the E Street Band performed without Clarence - and the first time performing with Jake as a member.

"The MVP of the evening was Jake Clemons," Andy Greene wrote for Rolling Stone. "He's filling very, very large shoes, but he didn't seem to have any opening night jitters. He pitched in on back-up vocals during the soul covers, and even played a large drum during 'We Are Alive.'

"It'll be interesting to see how his role in the band evolves as the tour goes on - but it's quite clear that Springsteen made a very wise choice in keeping the sax in the Clemons family."

Throughout the "Wrecking Ball" tour, which included a stop in Charlottesville, Jake was well-received on the road.

Critics noted the forcefulness with which he played, never forsaking the integrity of the song, but adding muscle and soulfulness to the overall sound, the way his uncle did with Springsteen for nearly 40 years.

"I have felt him there the entire time," Jake says of Clarence. "I feel him whenever I'm on that stage."

Jake says the exposure with Springsteen has added more momentum to his own career. More show bookings have come in; record companies have courted him.

But Jake has rebuffed most offers, insisting on maintaining control as an indie artist and allowing himself to grow. He's not rushing into a deal, something Springsteen suggested.

Jake and his five-piece band play mostly intimate venues around the world, with an average audience of about 200. It's a welcome reprieve from the demanding, arena-packing performances with Springsteen.

"Bruce has a different set list every night based on the conversation he's having with the audience, whatever the feel is," Jake says. "The audience is sitting on the edge of their seats wanting to know what's next, and so is the band.

"From where I'm standing, I have no clue. I have to listen for the intro. Your heart's racing and you're excited about catching the ball, you know? It's like the best magic show of all time."

For the first three months of 2014, Clemons is booked solid with the E Street Band, touring South America, Australia and New Zealand. In between those dates, he plans to tour and record more of his own songs.

Outside on the patio at Cafe Stella, the sun is blazing and Clemons, an avid surfer, wants to go home and take off his riding boots.

"I miss the water when I'm not home," he says, rising from the table.

Before he leaves, he places his used napkin into the empty coffee cup along with the spoon. Gingerly with one hand, he sweeps the table.

Rashod Ollison, 757-446-2732, [email protected]