It was a spare crowd that greeted the band when they took the stage to play “Shakedown Street” but it grew pretty quickly. It seemed to me that a hundred people even on the last day of November was a fairly low turnout. Ashland is invariably a “slow show” crowd and soon afterward there was at least a couple hundred. They were treated to a show that was also a slow burner.

Terrapin Flyer have long been respected for their Grateful Dead interpretations and their tendency to team up with impressive members of the extended Dead family. The Chicago cover group hit Portland’s Star Theatre February 11 as part of a Mardi Gras Tour, presented by the Grateful Web and day-glo’d by the Merry Pranksters, with old friends Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band), and Mark Karan (The Other Ones, RatDog) helping to hold down two stellar sets of New Orleans-charged tunes.