Bluegrass Tunes With Latvian Lilt : Music: Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Andy Marder taught himself to play bluegrass in his native Riga.

To observe that local musician Andy Marder plays bluegrass and country guitar with an accent is not a reference to a Nashville twang or a Carolina drawl.

Marder, whose skills are becoming a frequent topic of conversation in bluegrass circles that extend beyond San Diego, learned to play these native American styles in that well-known hotbed of fast picks and country licks: Latvia.

Latvia, of course, is the small country on the Baltic Sea that recently declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Marder, who was born and raised in the Latvian capital of Riga, won his freedom a little earlier, but it is his experiences before emigrating to our Coppertone shores in 1989 that read like a screenplay. This weekend, Marder, 30, will perform shows at Solos in Solana Beach and at Beans in University City.

In speaking to Marder earlier this week, the first thing one noticed was his near-perfect command of the English language, which he learned at the Latvian State University in Riga. There was only the slightest hint of an accent as he recalled his introduction to the music that, quite literally, would change his life.

“There’s no logical explanation for my love of bluegrass, only an emotional one,” he related in an unhurried, amiable manner. “Growing up, I was always interested in American pop culture, in rock and roll and blues, but only as a listener. My parents sent me to music school to learn piano at age 7, but I wasn’t interested and played hockey instead. Then, one day when I was 13, I heard ‘Dueling Banjos’ on the radio. It had gotten through all the (frequency) jamming that the Soviets did, and it blew me away. Somehow, I knew this was my music; it just captured my soul.”

Though smitten with the form virtually invented by American music legend Bill Monroe in the ‘40s, Marder had to put his interest on hold. For one thing, there weren’t many people in Riga who shared his enthusiasm. For another, he couldn’t find a five-string banjo anywhere. Temporarily, he settled for playing bass in the school band, but eventually he bought a guitar and began the painstaking process of self-instruction. At age 21, Marder’s interest in bluegrass took a turn for the serious.

“Because Riga is a seaport, sailors and others were always smuggling in music from all over the world,” he said. “Plus, we had relatively more access to outside information than other Soviet states because of our proximity to Finnish and Scandinavian radio stations. Of course, we were always about two or three years behind the rest of the world, but we absorbed as much Western culture as possible.

“I tried to get hold of whatever recordings I could,” Marder continued. “I spent hours and hours listening to tapes and albums by people like Doc Watson and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, whose album, ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken,’ is just the greatest source of information on bluegrass styles. Mostly, I had to guess about picking techniques and syncopation and all those things that make bluegrass and country very special. Years later, when I finally got hold of some instructional books, I found that I’d already learned most of the hard stuff on my own.”

With the perceptions of someone analyzing American music from a great distance, Marder was struck by the structural and expressive similarities that connect bluegrass, country, R&B;, rock ‘n’ roll and blues, and he expanded his musical universe to include them all. But bluegrass remained his first love. Upon being discharged from the Latvian army in 1982, Marder sought the musical soul mates with whom he could realize his blossoming ambitions.

“I found three people in all of Riga who shared my interest in bluegrass, and we formed a group called the Country Hour,” he said. “Of course, you could not make a living as a musician unless you were playing what the authorities wanted you to. Every performer had to submit his repertoire to a commission of individuals who knew nothing about music but made sure that everything was ideologically correct and didn’t offend the shrines of socialism, and all that (here Marder used a very Western expletive).”

The Latvian authorities pretended to tolerate the influx of Western pop culture as a way of demonstrating that they were keeping up with the rest of the world, but, officially, it was frowned upon.

“Instrumental music was considered OK because there were no words, but we had some vocals that we sang in English, which was really an offense,” Marder said. “Plus, the name Country Hour caused us problems because that was the name of an incredibly boring agricultural Soviet television program on Sunday mornings. When the commission asked us if we were ridiculing the Soviet agricultural system, we lied and said, ‘No, we’re called Country Hour because we play country music for one hour,”’ he added, laughing.

Like many of their peers, Country Hour performed in private apartments and homes around Riga, but as the band gained confidence, it sought more public exposure. At that time, there was a movement among Riga’s officially unsanctioned musicians to form an organization that would promote local performers, specifically by finding them a place to play.

“We formed the Contemporary Music Club, which included a traditional rock ‘n’ roll band, a Black Sabbath-type heavy metal band, an Indian folk group with sitars and everything, and us playing bluegrass and country,” Marder said.

Of course, once you have several bands together, and a potentially large, albeit underground following, there’s only one thing left to do.

“We wanted to put on a music festival, but you had to get official permission to do that,” Marder said. “Well, the rock bands sang lyrics in Russian and Latvian that were very offensive to the government, so we knew we couldn’t get permission. So, by word of mouth, we spread the word that there would be this event in the woods 60 kilometers from Riga, that you had to take a bus to a certain place and hike into the woods and look for the shack,” he added, laughing at the recollection.

The plan worked. Several hundred long-haired, jeans-clad young people made a pilgrimage to this mini-mini-Woodstock.

“It was really wonderful,” Marder recalled, wistfully. “The sound was terrible--something out of your worst nightmare--but there was a great spirit there because it was such a unique event for Latvians. It was also the first public performance of Country Hour. We’re all lucky to be alive, because there was no ‘ground’ for the electrical equipment and we could have all been electrocuted!”

Only a couple of hours into the festival, the idyll was broken by the arrival of two trucks carrying KGB agents. Because there had been rumors that they were coming, the members of Country Hour were ready to beat a hasty retreat, and they all managed to escape through the woods. The band that was playing, however, was not so lucky, and was arrested along with many members of the audience.

After that experience, Country Hour continued to play in small clubs and cafes around Riga, until Marder got offers to play in the neighboring country of Estonia.

“There was even more freedom in Estonia than in Latvia, and they had a number of rock bands and country bands,” Marder claimed. “The Estonian folk bands actually learned a lot of American country-music standards and put Estonian lyrics to them. So for a couple of years, I played with a professional band that played this modern type of ‘Estonian country.”’

In 1989, Marder heard that the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was going to play in Moscow, and he managed to get in touch with them. As a result, Marder, multiinstrumental virtuoso Mark O’Connor, Nitty Gritty guitarist Jimmie Fadden and the banjo player from Country Hour ended up jamming together on the streets of Moscow.

“That was a wonderful experience,” Marder remembered. “Also around that time, I met Roy Clark when he came to Riga, and jammed with him in his hotel room. Last year, after I had emigrated to the United States, he invited me to perform with him in Tulsa at the Roy Clark Celebrity Golf Tournament.”

Before leaving Riga, Marder also met Howard and Barbara Katz of San Diego. The couple were in Latvia as part of the Peace Child tour, a traveling troupe of kids who put on plays that promote peace and friendship among the nations. The Katzes told Marder to call them if he ever got to the States. Soon thereafter, he hooked up with the Hebrew International Aid Society, which helped him emigrate to New York. Marder took the Katzes up on their offer.

“They helped me move to San Diego and get settled,” said Marder, who lives with his Latvian-born wife and daughter in the College area. “What they’ve done for us can’t even be described in words. We’re so grateful. Barbara Katz, it turns out, is a wonderful poet, and we’ve been writing songs together. Like anyone else in music, my goal is to record albums and hit the big time.”

Marder has observed recent events in the Soviet Union with great interest, especially as they affect his native country. But his joy is tempered with some trepidation.

“It was very exciting, but also a little scary to see the great Soviet monuments destroyed,” he said. “I was very happy, of course, to see Latvia finally get its independence. There has always been a silent resistance to Soviet domination. Over the years the Soviets tried to dilute the Latvian culture, and it was sad to know that many Latvians could live there their entire lives and not even know how to speak the Latvian language. But, even though my mother and many friends are in Latvia, I am not anxious to go back.”

For a moment, the natural ebullience in Marder’s speech fades to a solemn hush.

“You have to understand, I grew up with this deep fear of the authorities, and there is still some of that inside me. Maybe someday, after I get an American visa, I’ll go back. Maybe then I will feel it is safe.”

Marder will perform at 11 p.m. Friday at Solos, in the Mandarin Coast Chinese restaurant, 221 North Highway 101, Solana Beach (755-4115); and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday at Beans, a coffee shop at 8935 Towne Center Drive, Suite 110, across from University Towne Center (453-9252).