Sage Francis and friends are at Jerky’s on Richmond Street in, Providence Thursday night at 9.

The Providence Journal

Rhode Island rapper Sage Francis calls it a year Thursday night, and he’s bringing over some friends to help him celebrate. Along with longtime collaborator B. Dolan, the show includes Portland, Ore., rapper Sleep and Minneapolis’ Cecil Otter, both of whom are on Francis’ own Strange Famous Records. It’s a tough sell, since the underground market is very regionalized and the Northeast is “the toughest market in music,” Francis says, but it’s worth bringing them to a wider audience. Sleep, he adds, has “an incredible live show, one that East Coast rap fans aren’t accustomed to,” with fully worked-out stage routines involving his DJ, even incorporating magic and illusion. “I’m just out there with a CD player,” Francis says.

Speaking of which, Francis will be doing material from his forthcoming disc. It’ll be the last under his contract with Epitaph Records, and while it sure looks like he’s planning to put out future music on his own label, he says of his contract situation, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” He says the new disc will come out sometime early next year; he won’t be more specific, but after working on it for two years, he says “there’s light at the end of the tunnel now.”

Sage Francis, Sleep, Cecil Otter and B. Dolan are at Jerky’s, 71 Richmond St., Providence, Thursday night at 9. Tickets are $15; call (401) 621-2244.

RHODE ISLAND GUITAR GREAT Duke Robillard brings the old-school jazz of his latest project, Sunny and Her Joy Boys, to the Peeptoad Coffeehouse, in Foster, to celebrate its new location at the Foster Country Club on Friday night.

Elwood Donnelly, one of the founders of the coffeehouse, says that the move was inspired by a desire to move the venue “out of the church setting and into a more social setting.” (The coffeehouse was formerly at the North Foster Baptist Church.)

More concretely, the country club will provide restaurant and bar service before and during the show, which Donnelly says could help attendance, as concert-goers can make an evening out of it. “Where can we get something to eat before the show?” was a question Donnelly fielded often, he says.

Donnelly raves about the accommodations the country club has made for the coffeehouse, including a promise to open specially during January and February. He also says that the new physical situation will influence the bookings when he takes that duty back over in spring. “I think it’s gonna be a win-win situation.”

And that’s not the only launch of the night — Robillard and Joy Boys singer Sunny Crownover will also be celebrating “Tales From the Tiki Lounge,” the first release for Robillard’s own label, Blue Duchess Records. (Robillard emphasizes that the new label is for “special projects” and that his own records, as well as Joy Boys discs, will continue to come out on Stony Plain Records.)

Robillard says that the new disc combines the lounge-exotica sound of the ’50s and early ’60s with a tribute to the style of Les Paul and Mary Ford, complete with the panoply of multiple guitar tracks that defined Paul, a pioneer in recording technology as well as the electric guitar. “He was a very big influence on me growing up,” says Robillard, echoing the sentiments of, well, pretty much every electric guitar player who has ever lived.

Sunny and Her Joy Boys are at the Peeptoad Coffeehouse, at the Foster Country Club, 67 Johnson Rd., Foster, Friday night at 8. Tickets are $20, $10 for children under 12. Call (401) 392-1322 or go to www.fosteringarts.org.

RICK MASSIMO