Email to all the Red Herring regulars:

This is from Peter Berkow.

I am quite excited about seeing all of you this weekend at the reunion.

I have been asked to be master of cermonies on Saturday night.

It is quite an honor to return to the town I grew up in this way.

Before we arrive, I wanted to send this personal note to all of you. I remember that 40 years ago it was my job to get people on and off the stage. The getting people off the stage was the most difficult part. (Grin.)

So many people wanted to play at this event, and Ron Cannon has worked very hard to give as many people as possible a chance to play some music. In fact, many late comers will not have a chance to play at all.

If you look at the set list, it is obviously very tight.

I can see that the folks at the end of the night will be pushed later and later if we aren't all willing to give up a little bit of ego.

In that spirit, I will be the first to voluteer to shorten my set by a song or two. I would rather spend the time giving some hugs and HEARING my old friends.

I hope most of you will follow in that spirit, with respect toward those who also want to share the stage.

My primary concern is for our friend, Ron Cannon. Without him, this event would not have happened. As one who has organized many, many events I know that the guy who puts it all together gets the least amount of time on stage, the fewest "thank yous," and the most complaints. If everybody goes a little long, Ron's set will happen around 3 in the morning ... and I wouldn't want to see that happen.

We need to reward him for his hard work.

I'm certainly NOT going to be a policeman at this show. It's my role to give a great introduction ... and that's it. I am going to ask you all to be aware of when your set should end.

One last thought: I hope that each and every one of you finds a way to personally thank Ron for making this happen. I can only imagine how many hundreds of hours he has put into organizing the event.

With much love to all of you ...

Please come up and say hello to me, when you see me. I haven't been there for 40 years, and I might not recognize some of you. Besides, I'm starting to suffer memory lapses from too many years of caffeine abuse ...

Peter Berkow

PS ... if you don't recognize ME ... I'm the guy with the baseball cap. It will either say "Sierra Nevada" or "Tommy Emmanuel" depending on my mood.