Last summer, it poured on the “HOT STOVE, COOL MUSIC: FENWAY PARK SESSIONS” fundraiser, sending the masses inside the dank by-ways of Fenway and putting a damper on an event that was already a bit down. PETER GAMMONS — the Brookline-based ESPN baseball guru who not only co-organizes “Hot Stove, Cool Music” but also dons his guitar and performs with a band of local all-stars — was recovering from an aneurysm he’d suffered earlier that summer and wasn’t able to participate.

“Not the happiest of occasions,” says singer KAY HANLEY, the now LA-based Letters to Cleo frontwoman who makes the trek back East every year for the show. Hanley — a participant since the first Hot Stove in 2001 — has high hopes for this year’s event, which will take over Fenway August 24. Gammons will be back, joined by five-time Grammy winner JOHN LEGEND, comic and MC MIKE O’MALLEY, and a number of usual suspects (BUFFALO TOM, Sox GM THEO EPSTEIN), and they’re all hoping to add substantially to the $625,000 raised over the past two years for Theo and Paul Epstein’s charity, the Foundation To Be Named Later.

When Hot Stove started six years ago at the Paradise, says Hanley, “it could not have been more humble. We put it together in less than three weeks.” The event has been a bi-annual staple since. (Winter gigs are at the ’dise.) This Friday’s roster also includes FRENCH LICK (Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck’s band) and the HOT STOVE ALL-STARS featuring the double guitar threat of Theo Epstein and Gammons. “To me,” explains Buffalo Tom frontman BILL JANOVITZ, “it’s a distinctly Boston thing. It’s not the most cutting-edge rock, but it’s good music, and people get to brush elbows with baseball players and rock-and-rollers.”

Hanley is currently working on a new CD for an early-2008 release. Janovitz, who just came off a Buffalo Tom tour, admits that family commitments have made it difficult to “make room in our lives for the band.” But BT are planning some fall dates to support their new Three Easy Pieces (New West) CD.