Spring is springing and Terrapin Flyer with Melvin Seals are hitting the road again this time going East! Along with Melvin is a great new configuration that includes two players who have never toured with Terrapin with Melvin. The tour will feature bassist extraordinaire Janis Wallin who played with Melvin and Steve Kimock in Crazy Engine and has played many previous TF shows that did not include Melvin.

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.