Mark Sandman: 20 Years Gone

At Lizard Lounge, Cambridge, July 5 at 7 and 10 p.m. Sold out, but some tickets may be available at the door. www.lizardloungeclub.com

It’s been 20 years since the shocking news of Mark Sandman’s death. The singer and musician, best known for his distinctive trio Morphine and the customized two-string slide bass he used, collapsed and died on July 3, 1999, while playing a festival in Italy with the band.

Forty-six at the time, Sandman left a long, fearlessly dark shadow over the Boston music scene. On Friday, many of the local musicians who passed through that shadow will gather at Lizard Lounge in Cambridge for two shows to pay tribute.

“Twenty years is a pretty big number,’’ says Mike Rivard, who organized the memorial. “In a perfect world, we’d do it every year.’’

Rivard, a fellow bass player and member of the Hypnosonics, Sandman’s long-running hard-funk side project, also plays bass for the Boston Pops Orchestra. Their standing Fourth of July gig at the Hatch Shell coincides with the anniversary of Sandman’s death.

“I always try to drop a little Morphine quote in,’’ Rivard says with a laugh. “So far, I haven’t been caught.’’

That’s fitting, because Sandman and his various bands were the sound of stealth. His lyrics were ruminative poetry, and he specialized in minimal, jazzy-not-jazz arrangements.

“Mark definitely heard things from the bottom up,’’ says Rivard. “His tunes were basically the bass line, the melody. It sounded pretty good to me.’’

With Morphine, Sandman had an unmistakable foil: the saxophonist Dana Colley, who prefers baritone, which only deepened the murk. With alternating drummers Jerome Deupree and Billy Conway, it all added up to a subtractive sound the band called “low rock.’’

Last week Colley was in the middle of a family road trip up the California coast, heading for Big Sur. On the phone, he discussed Morphine’s ongoing international fan base, and a few new projects in the works.

Vapors of Morphine, Colley’s post-Sandman band with Deupree and the New Orleans-bred guitarist Jeremy Lyons, expect to release a new album in the fall. It will feature some tracks with Deupree, who is stepping aside, and others with new drummer Tom Arey, who also plays with Peter Wolf’s Midnight Travelers.

Vapors will anchor part of the tribute at Lizard Lounge, along with Orchestra Morphine, the group that toured behind Morphine’s fifth and last studio album, “The Night,’’ which came out in 2000.

The surviving members of Morphine are also working on a vinyl reissue of their 1992 debut album, “Good,’’ with bonus tracks. “Cure for Pain’’ (1993) and “Yes’’ (1995) have already been reissued by Light in the Attic Records.

Two years ago Vapors of Morphine traveled to South America and Eastern Europe, where Sandman’s music is still revered.

“Their passion for the music blows your mind,’’ Colley says.

He’s also spent time back in Italy, where the locals who organized Nel Nome Del Rock, the festival where Sandman died, have become cherished friends. “The city of Palestrina has become a big part of our lives, and our families’ lives,’’ he says.

Having come from a festival in Lisbon, where it was “100 degrees in a parking lot,’’ Colley, Conway, and Sandman were enchanted by “this beautiful hill town, the breezes. We were greeted with wine, sitting under the pine trees, and we just felt like, wow.

“It was a day of celebration that turned into a day of tragedy, and we immediately bonded with the town and the people. To have Mark die that day, there’s something indelible in everything there. Everyone in that city will always remember that day.’’

Monique Ortiz won’t forget her first encounter with Sandman’s music. While playing bass in groups around her hometown in Pennsylvania, she had an idea of starting a band that featured her bass, no guitar. All the guitarists she knew seemed to have girl problems, she says.

Dealing with some turmoil of her own, she happened upon the black comedy film “Spanking the Monkey,’’ with a soundtrack featuring songs from “Cure for Pain.’’ Instantly struck, she waited for the credits to roll, then went to the record store to buy all the Morphine she could find.

After meeting the band at a gig in Philadelphia, she took a train to Boston. It was 1996. She stayed more than a decade.

Now living in Austin, Texas, where she leads the band Alien Knife Fight, Ortiz will travel to Boston for the memorial. When Rivard e-mailed to ask her to take part, she choked up, she says.

“Our home in Austin really looks like a southern outpost of Hi-n-Dry,’’ Sandman’s Cambridge workspace-turned-studio, she says, with Morphine posters and “odd instruments with strings missing hanging all over the walls.’’ But although she plays slide bass and worked for a time at the Middle East in Cambridge — Sandman, a regular there, sent her — Ortiz says she never knew him all that well.

“I would look for his shows but always felt very intimidated by him,’’ she admits. “He did a good job of keeping an invisible boundary around him. I think I was more interested in working my way into that community than getting close to Sandman.’’

Rivard, who says Sandman was a big brother of sorts for him, fondly recalls the open-door policy at Hi-n-Dry.

“People would flow in and out, and the tape machine was always running. It really had the feeling of a salon, a place where creative people would congregate to play music, drink wine, and smoke.’’

Rivard’s group Club D’Elf just released a trance-like single in honor of Sandman called “Level Up Your Soul.’’ The song, which has origins in the early days of the Hypnosonics, features singer Hayley Jane.

Like plenty of others, she’s a big fan of Sandman, Rivard says. After asking where Sandman used to hang out, she spent a few hours at Cambridge’s the Plough and Stars, where she wrote the lyrics.

It feels, Rivard says, like Sandman’s spirit was guiding her.

Mark Sandman: 20 Years Gone

At Lizard Lounge, Cambridge, July 5 at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Sold out, but some tickets may be available at the door. www.lizardloungeclub.com

James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.