Rare discoveries in your own backyard

In fact, the titillating promise of finding something new and almost certainly cool has kept Chris and Jennifer Daltry busy attending and hosting record shows in their hometown of Providence and for the past two years a music and craft-centric fair in Somerville’s Union Square.

“We started doing these rock ’n’ roll yard sales about six years ago in reaction to the WFMU record fair in New York,’’ Daltry says from Providence, where he and his wife, Jennifer, run their own vinyl-stocked store, What Cheer Antiques + Vintage. The WFMU radio station record fair, he says, “is three days long and it’s kind of a carnival of music and live bands, and record dealers. We started doing them and did really well. So one time on our ride home, we were like, I wonder if we could do something like this in Providence.’’

They did and eventually, after a few well-attended Providence record shows, some friends contacted the Somerville Arts Council, suggesting that a similar rock ’n’ roll yard sale might go over well in this neck of the woods. So far, the event - which is now heading into its third year - has been a terrific success, according to Chris Daltry.

This year’s installment, which kicks off tomorrow from 3 to 7 p.m. (with a Sunday rain date), is again shaping up as a loosely knit, pleasantly cluttered neighborhood tag sale-cum-street fair. Independent and small business vendors from all over New England are expected to be on hand, selling everything from LPs and CDs to handmade jewelry to locally designed clothing and accessories.

One of those vendors, Angela Sawyer, who owns and operates the exuberantly eclectic Weirdo Records store in Cambridge, says the spirit of Somerville’s rock ’n’ roll yard sale is different from other record shows she’s attended.

“It’s totally low-key and really fun - one of the nicest record fairs you can go to,’’ says Sawyer, who used to sell records out of her Somerville apartment. “It’s not full of people elbowing each other over bins of records. It’s more like a summer block party and very neighborhood-y. With some other record shows I’ve gone to, it almost feels like a business convention.’’

To keep the serious and stuffy at bay, tomorrow’s festivities also include live music, a DJ, and spoken-word performances as nearly varied as the wares on display. Teenbeat Records founder Mark Robinson and Evelyn Hurley’s indie electro-pop band, Cotton Candy, is scheduled to perform, as are Boston’s downcast folk dreamers the Blind King. Rhode Island indie-pop songwriter Chrisy Gavin and Daltry’s own spacey roots outfit, the ’Mericans, will also provide the afternoon’s soundtrack.

Also on tap is “Somerville SpeakOut,’’ a spoken-word performance by WMBR music director Patrick Bryant, who’ll DJ during the day.

These days more people are interested in buying vinyl, says Daltry, and it’s a trend that both surprises and heartens him. Of course, for Daltry and Sawyer, ferreting out prized oddities for their own lovingly curated LP collections is merely maniacal business as usual.

Sawyer says she hunts for obscure foreign-language instructional LPs, like “How to Speak Swahili,’’ for instance. “I just like finding unusual, difficult records,’’ she says. “And there are few records as unfamiliar or difficult to get your head around as those you can’t understand.’’

“My wife and I collect records that have weird stuffed animals on the cover,’’ Daltry confesses. “There’s one record I looked for a long time: a Chet Baker and Art Pepper jazz record called ‘Playboys.’ It has a topless model on the cover, and she’s holding these two hand-puppet stuffed animals in front of her breasts. It was pretty rare because Playboy magazine sued to take it off the market because [the label] pretty much used the Playboy font for the album title.’’

After years of hunting, Daltry struck pay dirt. “Eventually, I found a copy at a show - it was a Japanese reissue - but I got it at a reasonable price,’’ says Daltry. “It’s good to have a few things that you’re always looking for, that you hope you’ll come across someday.’’

TREAT ’EM RIGHT Through Sept. 20, listeners can download exclusive Mark Sandman compositions and do a good deed. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the onetime Morphine leader’s death, Hi-N-Dry Studios, in conjunction with the Mark Sandman Music Project, is posting exclusive, unreleased, and otherwise super-rare Sandman-related songs. You can pay what you want for the tracks, which will be available as downloadable MP3 files. All donations go toward the Sandman Project’s goal of providing children with the chance to participate in musical activities. Go to www.hi-n-dry.com.

Know something cool on the local scene? E-mail Jonathan Perry at roughgems@aol.com.