The May UK Blues night at Temperance in Leamington Spa had UK Blues Awards 2025 Nominees who between them had eleven nominations. This included Thomas Heppell, Chloe Josephine and The Swaps, with Chloe winning the Best Band award as part of Brave Rival (which she left at the end of 2024).
First up was Thomas Heppell from Portland (now based in Windsor) who had supported Belfast’s Dom Martin at Temperance the previous Friday. Thomas started life as a policeman for three years before going into teaching kids’ music, and then decided to move to being a full-time musician.
Thomas is a great blues guitarist and vocalist and entertained the packed house with songs with lots of slide guitar.
He also gave us a brand-new song with its first live performance with ‘Rock My World’ which he wrote a couple of months ago but wasn’t happy with the lyrics, which he needed to be a bit more sexy. It was a great raunchy up-tempo blues song.
To recognise the great blues player Robert Johnson he played ‘Rollin’ & Tumblin’’ before the first of audience participation songs with ‘Victims of Circumstance’ with its great blues style with raunchy vocals. This was followed by ‘John the Revelator’ made famous by the Blues Brothers film in 1980.
Another new song was ‘What Causes a Man to Break’ which was about his emotions after a roller-coaster year. This has a slower tempo with a more mellow expressive sound and vocals with echoey guitar.
He finished with the BB King classic ‘Every Day I Got the Blues’ which included a medley of other songs and guitar styles with a raunchy finish.
After a short break we had Portsmouth’s Chloe Josephine take to the stage supported on guitar by Thomas Heppell. They have got to know each other well over the last six months and contributed to two songs in this set.
Chloe kicked off with ‘Getting Friendly’ with great soulful vocals from Chloe and bluesy guitar from Thomas. This was followed by a new song from Chloe/Thomas with ‘Are You There’ with great passionate expressive vocals from Chloe and great backing from Thomas on guitar.
As Chole commented she is a great fan of Aretha Franklin soul influenced music and is doing a show in Portsmouth covering her music, which has sold out. Chloe showed her virtuosity with her rendition of ‘A Level of a Man’
From the just released EP Rebloom Chloe gave us ‘Feels Like Forever’ with its slow echoey guitar start and slow passionate vocals from Chloe. This had been written by Chloe on one of her Brave Rival tours but had been parked until she investigated again and recorded it.
The second new Chloe/Thomas collaboration was ‘Too Much of a Good Thing’ which was a more upbeat bluesy song on guitar with soulful lyrics and slide guitar breaks from Thomas.
She finished with a cover of a Southern Avenue song ‘Don’t Give Up’ with raunchy guitar and powerful soulful vocals from Chloe and ‘I Wear What I Like’ with its catchy soulful chorus and great expressive actions from Chloe.
Then after another short break we had the host band The Swaps from Leamington Spa, with a line-up of James Knight (guitar & vocals), Beth Brooks (vocals), Adam Philips (guitar & backing vocals) along with Ben Haines on percussion.
The Swaps who had gained lots of new fans and venue bookings after their live appearance at the UK Blues Awards 2025, kicked off with just James & Beth with ‘Video Games’, requested by Temperance host Adrian Gains, with Beth’s great blues vocals on a slow melodic song.
They were then joined by Adam Philips on ‘Fast Train’ with its lovely guitar interplay between James and Adam and lovely vocals with her unique breathless style of singing.
Then with Ben also on percussion they played ‘Story’ which was written by James in 2020 with the message of looking forward. With James’s slide guitar, Beth’s great blues vocal style, Adams picking style on guitar and Ben on percussion.
One of their more well-known songs is ‘Scars’ which is a story of a bad bad girl with great twin guitars, percussion, Beth’s powerful vocals and Adam on harmonies.
They finished with ‘Deep’ with Adam on slide guitar, James on rhythm guitar with Beth’s deep soulful lyrics.
Then for the finale blues jam The Swaps were joined by Thomas & Chloe on ‘My Kitchen’ with James on vocals and Thomas & James on slide guitar with Chloe & Beth on backing vocals. The last song was a much funky number with James on slide guitar with ‘Shook Me’ with Chloe & Beth on alternating lead vocals and Thomas on electric guitar with great solo riffs.