Mumford & Sons play the Springsteen song Atlantic City with Jake Clemons

Mumford & Sons brought out Jake Clemons, the saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, to open their encore on Saturday with a song from Nebraska. JamBase reports that the British band played Atlantic City on the beachfront at Asbury Park, New Jersey, with Marcus Mumford behind the drum kit singing lead.

The geography is the whole point of the booking. Asbury Park is where Springsteen's band was assembled and where his first record took its title from, and a festival on that beach hosting a British act covering one of his darkest songs is a specific kind of tribute rather than a generic one. Atlantic City is the acoustic standout of Nebraska, the 1982 album Springsteen recorded alone on a four-track, and it is about a man agreeing to do something he will not be able to undo.

Mumford made the dedication explicit from the stage. "We love you Bruce! And we love you Jake Clemons from the E Street Band!" he said after the song, which put the credit where the band wanted it: on the writer and on the guest, in that order.

This was not a first attempt. The band have played Atlantic City ten times previously, most recently on 5 August 2025 in Richmond, Virginia, so what changed here was the room and the player rather than the arrangement. Clemons stayed for the first song only; the encore went on with The Banjo Song and I Will Wait.

Mumford's move to the drums is worth noting for anyone who has only seen the band since they became a stadium act. He was the drummer before he was the frontman, and dropping back behind the kit to sing a Springsteen song about desperation is a deliberate reduction of the usual staging. Earlier in the set he had gone the other way entirely, running through the crowd on the beach during Ditmas.

Guests have become a fixture of this band's live year rather than a surprise in it, from Jason Sudeikis appearing at Madison Square Garden to Stella Lefty joining them there on her birthday. Springsteen has been doing the reverse on his own turf, joining Bleachers onstage in Asbury Park for two songs. The rock hub carries the rest of the week's live news.