Jess Clemons brings soulful music to Atheneum

PHOTO COURTESY OF JESS CLEMONS The ocean has had a deep influence on the work of singer and songwriter Jess Clemons. Now she even makes it her home.

She was born and raised in Vermont. After graduating from high school, Clemons spent the summer of 2002 on Nantucket with a classmate. They had heard it was a beautiful place with nice people, and came with just backpacks and bikes to camp out in a friend's yard. Clemons found a job and stayed until it was time to enter college at Acadia University on Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundi, where she studied voice and piano.

Clemons, now 24, said Nova Scotia was inspiring to her and she wrote several songs in that period about relationships and the water and how tides affect people's lives along with the pull of other influences. She describes her music as sort of bluesy but also "stripped down" acoustic piano and guitar. Her voice has been compared to Bonnie Raitt's and Tracy Chapman's.

Clemons has played here on six occasions, most recently last fall at the Nantucket Cranberry Festival. A Nantucket audience will be treated to a new performance in the Atheneum's Great Hall at 7 p.m., Saturday, May 30 when Clemons will sing some of her original songs including "Well the Tide," "Skin and Bones" and "The Toronto Song," a song she composed at that city's airport after missing a flight. As of last Friday, she was still completing her program.

"Sometimes I just pull it out of the hat as the night goes on, depending on what the audience is feeling like," she explained.

As Clemons' life progressed she maintained her love for and connection with the island by spending a few weeks here each year she was in college. After graduating from Acadia in 2006, she stayed in Nova Scotia one more year because she was busy playing with a band, helping friends open a restaurant and recording her first album.

She managed to slip away for a month in 2007, which is when she met her boyfriend on Nantucket and committed to staying half the year on the island. She moved in with her fellow, who lives on his employer's houseboat moored in the harbor. They have a rowboat and power Zodiac to get to the boat from the dock, and Clemons said it is a lifestyle she enjoys.

"It's the best place 90 percent of the time when the weather is cooperating," she said, describing its full kitchen with propane refrigerator and stove and running water. "It's just kind of off the grid. It's a very simple lifestyle and it's really cozy. I love it. It's like a little Nantucket cottage with wainscoting and woodwork. It's really nice."

Clemons, who in 2008 won the Burlington (Vermont) Acoustic Singer/Songwriter Contest, just completed a four-month tour performing across the country. Now she is gardening, waiting tables at Centre Street Bistro and writing new music. She hopes to play at this fall's Nantucket Arts Festival and to line up private home concerts where she sings in an intimate setting. Later in the autumn Clemons will begin touring again, anticipates recording another album and is trying to become a member of the national folk festival circuit.

"Eventually, I'd like to be able to support myself with my music fulltime. I'm slowly transitioning from a part-time musician to full-time, but I keep coming back here because I love it and I can't stay away," she said.