POP MUSIC REVIEW : Well-Grounded Bluegrass Under Shade Tree : Pickit Line and the Andy Rau Band give solid performances, and both have moments of brilliance. They could work on extra-musical personality, though.

Pickit Line and the Andy Rau Band, two Orange County bluegrass groups with hopes of building reputations beyond the local scene, put on a small festival of their own Saturday night at Shade Tree Stringed Instruments.

So far, both bands have released self-made cassettes and have begun making their way before a wider range of fans at regional bluegrass festivals. At the Shade Tree, both could have used some fine-tuning and focus when it came to presenting an extra-musical personality. But the performances were never less than solid, and both bands achieved flashes of brilliance.

Pickit Line took a traditionalist slant in its headlining set, although it was applied mainly to contemporary material. While certainly up to par in the picking department, singing was Pickit Line’s forte.

The band could call on Garrison Shirreffs, whose sweet, firm and fervent tenor was ideally suited to ballads, or on Janet Beazley, who provided a contrasting full-bodied, tawny hue. With rhythm guitarist Marshall Andrews, they formed a first-rate harmony combination.

Pickit Line asserted its vocal skills in an a cappella gospel song. Fred Wade, the band’s preternaturally mellow bassist, sang a bass line full and supple enough to have prompted any doo-wop groups lurking in the neighborhood to begin plotting a kidnap. The song, “When the World’s On Fire,” was so robust and good-natured that it made the apocalypse sound like the ultimate picnic. Shirreffs’ wry, spunky original, “I Don’t Care,” provided another nice, light moment.

The 70-minute set was varied and balanced. Brisk, traditionally structured bluegrass songs, featuring pumping rhythms and bright flights on banjo (courtesy of Beazley) and mandolin (by Shirreffs) had a way of putting a bright spin on the most sorrowful lyrics. A selection of bluegrass versions of country and cowboy ballads allowed Pickit Line to wax outright melancholy.

Shirreffs had just the voice for such sweet lamentations as the prisoner’s reverie, “I’ll Break Out Tonight,” which featured guest soloist Bo Brown sighing along on Dobro. Brown gave Pickit Line a special spark when he turned up to solo on guitar and mandolin in a blazing encore.

On up-tempo songs, Shirreffs and, to a lesser extent, Beazley had trouble bursting through the layers of instrumentation to make themselves heard clearly. That might have been the result of an imperfect sound mix (the Rau Band had the same problem) but there were also times when Shirreffs could have mustered more vocal exuberance and clout--qualities that the group’s harmony passages supplied abundantly.

Between songs, Pickit Line was prone to pick on itself too much, with members fussing and fretting out loud a couple of times that they’d played songs too fast. “We’re a little insecure sometimes,” Shirreffs confessed. While there was some funny byplay (including a nice recovery from an obvious fluff in which Shirreffs started singing “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” in one key while strumming it in another), Pickit Line would be better off dropping the outward insecurity and self-criticism and cultivating the glow of confidence. Unless, of course, it wants to be the Woody Allen of bluegrass bands.

The Andy Rau Band’s approach was more modern and genre-bending. It applied bluegrass accents to songs steeped in contemporary folk and country, with hints of rock and pop as well. The group’s prime strength was an instrumental attack founded on inventive, dramatic arrangements, full of pregnant pauses and resonant chording, and keyed by fiery, fluid soloing on banjo and guitar.

All-instrumental tunes that opened and closed the 50-minute set became showpieces for Rau’s bristling power-banjo runs, which went for linear drive instead of more typical circular patterns. Guitarist Les Johnson and mandolinist Evan Marshall were also high-impact, high-energy players. Johnson was particularly versatile, able to toss off speedy, darting licks, then turn around and dab some of the sweetest, warmest slide-guitar accents imaginable onto a ballad.

Rau and the band’s other singer-songwriter, bassist Dennis Roger Reed, were adequate but not striking vocalists who sounded best when teamed with Marshall on chorus harmonies. All their material was dark or plaintive until the stirring, affirmative instrumental finale, “Alveolar Ridge.” Reed’s poignant “Just Look in the Mirror” was the set’s strongest composition.

Rau tried to inject some social conscience with a folk-pop song warning about impending environmental doom. While right-minded, it was too prosaic lyrically. Stretching for poetry at another juncture, he got his imagery all contorted as he envisioned himself “hanging from the edge of a crystal ball, arms outstretched, waiting for a fall.” Anyone hanging with arms outstretched won’t have to wait for a fall; and while Ouija boards have edges, crystal balls don’t. Keeping the theme personal and the language basic and straightforward, Rau scored on “Missing Dixie,” a warm tune about homesickness and yearning for a simpler life. It marked the band’s closest approach to a traditional bluegrass sound, while maintaining a folk-country catchiness.

While Rau and band could hardly have been more assured instrumentally, that confidence and facility escaped them between songs. Rau seemed to have the jitters, fumbling about between numbers trying to find a missing pick or capo, or accidentally knocking the head of his banjo against a microphone. In folk-related genres, it’s almost as important to talk a good game as to play one.

Reed did get off one good quip, after Rau had explained that the band members sported sunburns because they had played an outdoor gig at a hospital that afternoon. “There were only five admissions to the hospital directly attributable to bluegrass,” the bassist deadpanned.

Banjo player David Guptill opened with a set of six well-crafted instrumental pieces, with Bo Brown and the Pickit Line rhythm section sitting in. Guptill’s banjo playing was nimble and accurate but lacked fiery presence. Consequently, Brown’s impressive mandolin dominated. Guptill’s tunes weren’t just picking fodder, but mature compositions that communicated feelings: a blues-rag touch underscored the humor in “Over the Hill,” while “Just One More” was a fine parting tune.