Kim Lembo

Blues vocalist Kim Lembo launched her recording career in 1994 by cutting multiple albums for Blue Wave in tandem with her group Blue Heat. The Syracuse, NY-based singer enlisted multi-instrumentalist/producer Mark Doyle to shape her first effort, which took its title from the band itself. She reunited with Doyle two years afterward for the follow-up release Mama Lion. Throughout the mid-'90s Lembo cultivated a substantial regional audience across New York state while maintaining a steady performance schedule that earned consistent praise. When Blue Wave issued her third album, Ready to Ride (1999), that audience had grown large enough to secure a January 2000 engagement at Paris's Chesterfield Cafe. Recordings from those concerts later appeared on the Paris Burning album, issued later the same year.