Photograph of Martha Skilton and Newman Tai by Pam Mann

‘From Barbecue To Black Coffee’,  Saturday at Abergavenny Food Festival, 19/09/2026

Founded in 1999 Abergavenny Food Festival is one of the biggest of its kind and draws thousands of visitors to the town on an annual basis.

It also has a long running musical strand and I still fondly recall a 2004 AFF show at the Borough Theatre by the cult American born singer songwriter and general cultural polymath Peter Blegvad, who was accompanied by his former Henry Cow colleagues Chris Cutler (drums) and John Greaves (bass).

The 2026 edition featured seven different music acts over the Saturday and Sunday of the Festival with the performances taking place in the Music Tent at the Lower Brewery Yard venue.

I’ll return to some of those later, but my main reason for being at the Festival was to cover the “From Barbecue To Black Coffee” event presented by the local jazz club, Black Mountain Jazz, at the Local & Vocal venue in the Castle Grounds.

I’ve been covering BMJ events on a regular basis since 2008 and Club organiser Mike Skilton was particularly keen that I should review this special one off event. I’m grateful to Mike for arranging Festival wristbands for my wife and myself, which meant that I could not only cover the BMJ event but also some of the earlier performances in the Music Tent.

“FROM BARBECUE TO BLACK COFFEE”, LOCAL & VOCAL STAGE

Martha Skilton – soprano saxophone, Newman Tai – keyboard
John Hellings, Nigel Jarrett – text & narration

As I’d been invited specifically to cover this event it essentially represents my ‘main course’, so I’m going to address it first, even though it was the last event of the day in purely chronological terms.

BMJ’s first official involvement with the Food Festival was centred around the idea of “exploring the connections between jazz and food”, a concept that originated with Mike Skilton.

Mike invited jazz broadcaster John Hellings and jazz journalist Nigel Jarrett to write and deliver the script while the musical illustrations were provided by the duo of Martha Skilton on soprano saxophone and Newman Tai on piano.

John Hellings is a respected jazz broadcaster who used to host a specialist jazz show on BBC Hereford & Worcester, which was also syndicated to other BBC local radio stations. Unfortunately this was axed as the result of one of the Beeb’s regular round of budget cuts, presumably to help pay for the inflated salaries of the likes of Claudia Winkleman and Alan Shearer. Don’t get me started. Shame on you BBC. John now broadcasts for the online station Serenade Radio and also provides regular podcasts for BMJ, he really has been a great friend to the Club.

Nigel Jarrett writes for Jazz Journal, now an entirely online publication. He is also a former newspaper journalist and a published author and poet with several books, both fiction and non fiction, to his credit. As a jazz journalist he has also written for the Wales Arts Review and was the jazz correspondent for the South Wales Argus. He is also a great friend of BMJ and has scripted and hosted a number of previous themed events in addition to providing the text for the Club’s “Jazz Through The Ages” series of pop up posters.

Martha Skilton, daughter of Mike, is a graduate of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD) in Cardiff. She plays tenor, alto and soprano saxophones,  today choosing to specialise on the latter. In addition to playing jazz she also performs with various function bands and is a qualified music therapist and saxophone tutor.

Newman Tai studied at Cardiff University and is an increasingly busy presence on the South Wales jazz scene. He has appeared regularly in Abergavenny at regular BMJ club nights and also at the associated Wall2Wall Jazz Festival. His playing has been heard alongside a wide range of instrumentalists and vocalists and in 2025 he led the house trio at BMJ’s “Jazz Pick ‘n’ Mix” concert.

Today’s show opened with Nigel and John musing about the relationships that performing jazz musicians have with food, often wolfing down unhealthy meals in motorway service stations and greasy spoons on the way to and from gigs in various parts of the country. Nigel recalled vocalist Kevin Fitzsimmons performing an afternoon show at the Wall2Wall Festival and quickly scoffing a couple of sausage rolls before driving back to London to perform another show in the evening. John recalled interviewing pianist Stan Tracey who told him that at any time of the day and night you’d find a jazz musician in the Blue Boar service station on the M1, a regular port of call for musos of all genres. The fact that Martha was dashing off straight after this event to play with a function band at an after wedding party suggests that nothing much has changed.

Functioning very effectively, and frequently amusingly, as a double act John and Nigel then discussed the tendency for early jazz and blues musicians to use double entendres to get the titles and the subject matter of their songs past the censors. For example Bessie Smith’s “I Want A Little More Sugar In My Bowl” wasn’t really about taking afternoon tea!

This brought us to the first musical performance of the afternoon with Martha and Newman performing “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue”, written for trumpeter Louis Armstrong by his pianist wife Lil. In New Orleans ‘Barbecue’ was also a slang term referring to pretty young women and thus the song is another example of the food / sex metaphor. Martha and Newman performed the tune with genuine relish, with Newman deploying an acoustic piano setting on his Yamaha electric keyboard – for the rest of this feature I’ll refer to it as a ‘piano’. Martha chose to focus exclusively on soprano sax for the purpose of today’s show as she and Newman shared soloing duties on this lively and spirited opener.

The next selection was “Tangerine”, another song with a title referring to a foodstuff that isn’t actually about food at all. John and Nigel informed us that the song was written by composer Victor Schertzinger and lyricist Johnny Mercer for the 1942 film “The Fleet’s In” starring William Holden and Dorothy Lamour and with a soundtrack by the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra. The mysterious Tangerine was actually a character in the movie, a South American femme fatale who became a source of fascination for US audiences. As one of Mercer’s biographers wrote;  “Latin America, the one part of the world not engulfed in World War II, became a favourite topic for songs and films for Americans who wanted momentarily to forget about the conflagration”

Although the film that spawned it has largely been forgotten “Tangerine” has become a well established and much recorded jazz standard and today’s version was delivered with genuine elan by Martha and Newman.

Next up “Tea For Two”, a song dating back more than a century to 1924 and written by Vincent Youmans and lyricist Irving Caesar for the musical “No No Nanette”. John recalled interviewing Sir John Dankworth over a pot of tea while Nigel enthused about a live recording of the song by vocalist Anita O’Day documented at the famous Newport Jazz Festival. 
Newman ushered in the performance of the tune with a passage of unaccompanied piano before sharing further soloing opportunities with Martha as the duo delivered an appropriately vivacious performance of this enduringly popular song.

Compared to “Tea For Two” Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man”, written in 1962, was bang up to date! As Nigel explained it’s one of those tunes that has broken out of the ‘jazz ghetto’ to become popular with a wider audience. He also cited further examples including Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”, George Benson’s “Breezin’” and Errol Garner’s “Misty”. Originally written for Hancock’s debut album for Blue Note, “Takin’ Off”, the song was later popularised by the Afro-Cuban percussionist and bandleader Mongo Santamaria. Hancock spent some time in the Santamaria band (he had replaced Chick Corea) and appeared on Santamaria’s hit recording, which is considered to be the first example of the boogaloo music genre. In 1973 Hancock revisited the tune with his Headhunters band, re-inventing it in a jazz-funk context. Watermelon sellers were a common sight in Afro-American areas of US cities and Hancock’s tune was named for one such vendor in his native Chicago. The tune has since become a modern day jazz standard and has, via its various incarnations, also reached out to an even wider musical constituency.
Martha and Newman’s rendition was perhaps closest in spirit to the jazz original but contained allusions to the other versions too as they shared the solos. As the only rhythmic component in this pared down duo format Newman’s work with his left hand is also worthy of special mention.

“Salt Peanuts” is a ‘rhythm changes’  bebop tune composed in 1941 by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer Kenny Clarke. The salted peanuts of the title were sold in American bars to encourage extra beer consumption, much as potato crisps were, and still are, are in the UK, with John and Nigel recalling the old Smith’s crisps with their little blue bags of salt concealed inside the packet. They also referenced the famous 1953 recording of the song on the live recording “Jazz At Massey Hall”, recorded by the jazz supergroup’ The Quintet (Gillespie,  alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianist Bud Powell,  bassist Charles Mingus, and drummer Max Roach).
Martha and Newman’s joyous performance of the piece was great fun and seemed to capture something of Gillespie’s famously bubbly personality.

The show started with a barbecue and came to a close with “Black Coffee”, a song from 1948 written by Sonny Burke and lyricist Paul Francis Webber. It was variously recorded by Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald and most famously by Peggy Lee, who also worked with Burke on the animated Disney musical “Lady and The Tramp”. The song is based on the blues and the musical performance by Martha and Newman was suitably blues tinged and noirish.

The show ended with John and Nigel musing on the fact that jazz was often historically performed in smoky basements with alcohol a constant presence. They rounded it off by telling a couple of old Ronnie Scott jokes, and as this wasn’t a specialist jazz audience it was possible that there may even have been people in the crowd who hadn’t heard them before.

“From Barbecue to Black Coffee” fully delivered on its promise with John and Nigel proving to be engaging and entertaining narrators, amusing and informing the audience in almost equal measure and adding a wealth of fascinating detail as they explained the background behind each song.

The musical performances from Martha and Newman were skilful and vivacious and the standard of the playing was excellent throughout with Martha’s soprano sax a particularly distinctive component as the duo placed their own stamp upon the selected tunes.

The tented Local & Vocal venue was full and many other people gathered around the entrance to listen, ensuring that the show played to a pleasingly sizeable audience.

Mike Skilton, who had provided the initial spark for the event, announced himself delighted with the way that things had gone and considered the event to be a great success in its own right. It also represented an excellent advertisement for the work of Black Mountain Jazz and an effective trailer for BMJ’s annual Wall2Wall Jazz Festival which will take place at the Melville Centre in Abergavenny over the weekend of 25th - 27th September 2026. Details here;
https://www.blackmountainjazz.co.uk/wall2wall-festival2026

Nigel and John also noted that seven of the nominees for the 2026 Parliamentary Jazz Awards have played for Black Mountain Jazz either at a regular Club night or at the Wall2Wall Festival. They are vocalists Marvin Muoneke and Sylvie Noble, pianists Joe Webb and Fergus McCreadie, bassists Alison Rayner and Ursula Harrison and trumpeter Olivia Cuttill. The last named of these will be playing the 2026 Wall2Wall next week. It’s a list that reflects the high standard of the music that BMJ brings to Abergavenny on a regular basis.

“From Barbecue to Black Coffee” represented a great way to round off a very enjoyable day at Abergavenny Food Festival. Earlier in the day I had enjoyed three other musical performances in the Music Tent, the hors d’œuvres, if you will. These are considered below ;

BELLA COLLINS

Bella Collins - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar

On the Saturday of the Festival the Music Tent was open from 10.45am to 5.00 pm and featured three acts, each performing two sets. It was a format that reminded me of the old Lichfield Real Ale Jazz & Blues Festival.

Abergavenny Food Festival attracts thousands of people and the streets of the town were crowded and bustling, uncomfortably so at times. I go to jazz gigs and support a football team in the sixth tier, so I’m not used to large crowds!

Once I’d secured myself a table in the Music Tent I was much happier and settled back to enjoy one full set from each of the three acts.

The first performance that I saw was a solo acoustic set from the Cardiff based guitarist, singer and songwriter Bella Collins. She’s a musician that I’ve seen on numerous occasions at both Brecon Jazz Club and Brecon Jazz Festival, either in a duo with fellow guitarist Gareth Evans or a trio with Evans and vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jane Williams. She also plays some of the country’s leading blues festivals, including Tenby and Upton, and in 2026 she co-ordinated the acoustic stage at Upton Blues Festival.  Collins also plays bass and sometimes fronts a three piece electric blues band featuring guitarist Tom Kuras and drummer Tom Gilkes.

For today’s all acoustic solo set Collins promised us a mix of “blues, jazz and soul”, but the programme also included a dash of pop and rock and even country.

The performance began with “You Take Away My Blues”, followed by Collins putting a bluesy slant on the jazz standard “All of Me”.

A version of Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ On The Dock of The Bay” provided the soul content.
Also included was a bluesier interpretation of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”  and a version of Nina Simone’s “My Baby Just Cares For Me”.

Collins wasn’t afraid to introduce some of her own songs into the set, including the blues / rock ‘n’ roll hybrid “I’m On My Way” and the country tinged “You May Be Surprised”, a co-write with the Pembrokeshire based singer and songwriter Jodie Marie, with whom she works as a duo under the group name Sister Bodhi.

Collins is a talented singer, instrumentalist and songwriter and an engaging personality. I’ve always enjoyed seeing her perform and today’s set got my day of music off to an excellent start.

It was also good to be able to fully appreciate Collins’ capabilities as a guitarist. In the duo with Evans she normally plays rhythm while he takes the lead breaks and solos. In this solo performer setting her own abilities were more readily apparent.

BARREL HOUSE VIPERS

Rachel Lawrence – lead vocals, accordion, washboard, percussion, double bass, James French – trumpet, Gus Dolding – clarinet, acoustic guitar, Bill Frampton – upright bass, harmonica

The Barrel House Vipers are a Bristol based quartet specialising in the music of the 1920s and 1930s, mixing trad jazz with blues and other popular musics of the time. They are fronted by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Lawrence, a busy presence on the Bristol music scene who performs with a number of different acts and also works as a music educator.

The group often goes out as a trio featuring multi-instrumentalists Lawrence, Dolding and Frampton but today they were augmented by the trumpet of James French, which brought a welcome splash of additional jazz colour to the band.

The quartet opened up with Lawrence singing the song “At Sundown”, accompanying herself on washboard and associated attached percussion as French on trumpet and Dolding on guitar provided the instrumental solos.

Instrument swappage was frequent with Lawrence moving to accordion and Dolding to clarinet for “Delta Bound”, with French and Dolding again the featured instrumental soloists.

The guitar and washboard combination returned for the old Billie Holiday song “Let’s Dream In The Moonlight” and the band continued in this instrumental format for “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”  and “St. Louis Blues”.

Also performed in the same instrumental format “I’m Blue, I’m Lonesome” featured French’s trumpet soloing plus a series of exchanges between Frampton’s electric upright bass and the guitar and washboard.

Frampton switched to harmonica and Lawrence to double bass for a blues song that I couldn’t quite identify, with Frampton the featured instrumental soloist alongside trumpeter French.

It was the clarinet / accordion combination that appeared on the cheekily titled ‘viper’ song “When I Get Low I Get High” with Dolding and French both featuring as soloists.

“Some of These Days” was a return to guitar and washboard with instrumental solos from French, Dolding and Frampton at the bass.

The Vipers’ set concluded with the second rendition of the day of the jazz standard “All The Things You Are”, sounding very different in this instrumental configuration.

I’ll admit to not always being a huge fan of this style of jazz, but nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed this performance from Barrel House Vipers. In the main this was because of the high quality of both the singing and the playing. Lawrence sang with clarity and authority and, like Dolding and Frampton, proved herself to be a highly competent multi-instrumentalist. Judge proved to be a fluent trumpet soloist and Dolding was similarly impressive on both clarinet and acoustic guitar, the latter sometimes sounding banjo-like. A well chosen selection of songs also added to an entertaining and enjoyable show.

THE POOBAHS

Dave Luke – guitar, vocals, John Hymas – fiddle, accordion, Clovis Phillips – bass guitar, Dave Cook – drums

Based in the Welsh Marches with its members variously hailing from the towns of Presteigne and Newtown The Poobahs are a pretty much a local act as far as I’m concerned. Luke and Hymas also play with a variety of other local bands while bassist Clovis Phillips is a former member of the Will Barnes Quartet.

The Poobahs describe their music as being “the best in Cowjazz and Celticana”, an intriguing self summation of a sound that embraces Americana, traditional Celtic folk music, country, Western Swing and good honest rock ‘n’ roll – plus a whole lot more besides.

I’ve seen these seasoned veterans of the local music circuit on a couple of previous occasions, the last time at the annual Sheep Music Festival in Presteigne a couple of years ago. Playing the late night ‘party slot’ they had everybody up in the tent up and dancing – yes, even me.

That wasn’t quite the case today at three in the afternoon. Most of the people gathered in the Music Tent were more interested in chilling out and escaping from the myriad hordes swarming around the food stalls. That’s not so say that the music wasn’t well received, people were very appreciative of the hugely entertaining and admirably varied musical menu that The Poobahs served up.

The band hit the musical highway with “Route 66”. with Luke’s authoritative vocals and propulsive rhythm guitar augmented by Hymas’ accordion solo.

Hymas switched to fiddle for “The Sugar Foot Rag”, a song written by the country guitarist Hank Garland. He remained on the instrument for an instrumental arrangement of a traditional folk tune.

Luke originally hails from the ‘Dartford Delta’ and is a huge admirer of the band he regards as local heroes, The Rolling Stones. His love of the Stones and their music was expressed via a fiddle fuelled arrangement of “Paint It Black”, which The Poobahs performed with considerable panache.

This sure-fire winner was followed by another, a version of “Ring Of Fire”, a song most commonly associated with Johnny Cash but jointly composed by his wife, June Carter, and Merle Kilgore. It was originally recorded by June’s sister Anita Carter. All this information came from Luke, a musician with a great love and knowledge of the music he plays.

Next up a song that Luke described as “the greatest English country song ever written”. This proved to be Kirsty MacColl’s “There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis”, which saw Hymas’ fiddle solo augmented by Phillips’ mobile bass lines and Cook’s solid drumming.

This was followed by a diversion into Western Swing with an arrangement of “Take Me Back To Tulsa”, recorded by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys back in 1941. Featuring more feisty fiddling from Hymas this item also included a bass guitar solo from Phillips.

Hymas briefly reverted to accordion for a second Rolling Stones homage, a version of “The Last Time”. He then switched back to the fiddle for an instrumental version of the traditional American folk tune “Mother, Shove That Pig’s Foot Further In The Fire”.

The Poobahs concluded their highly entertaining set with the drinker’s lament “Let Me Go Home Whisky”, which I guess counts as another food related song.

My Saturday at Abergavenny Food Festival featured four very different musical performances, all of which impressed thanks to the skills of the performers involved. The playing and singing was highly competent right across the board and it was good to hear so many styles of predominately American music,  culminating in the jazz and food odyssey of “From Barbecue to Black Coffee”.

 

 

 

 

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