Jars of Clay jammed with The Elms Wednesday night at the Convocation Center.

Many audience members traveled from outside DeKalb to catch the show.

“They’re awesome. They’re cool man,” said Caleb Davick from Sandwich.

Opening band The Elms, which hail from Indiana, pumped up the crowd with their heavy guitar-driven melodies and vocals.

“I thought, overall, it was a really, really great show,” said Elms lead singer/lead guitar Owen Thomas. “We had a blast, people were really receptive and- I had a great time.”

Jars of Clay took the stage next, punching the air with their pop sound. Lead singer Dan Haseltine – who also played the tambourine – made his accordion, which is often proclaimed the most-annoying-instrument-ever-invented, sound like a melodic bag of noise.

Mid-performance, between tracks, Haseltine announced the next song was “probably one of the most important songs ever written.” Jars of Clay then broke into a ballad-version of the Cyndi Lauper hit “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.”

“Flood,” the well-known Jars of Clay hit, was well-received as Haseltine, shaded in a purple tint, fell to his knees, grasping light.

During the encore, all of the Jars of Clay members left the stage for about five minutes while Haseltine raged about the crisis in Africa, encouraging audience members to contribute to the cause.

“We support African leadership,” Haseltine said before the performance. “There is an organization that does humanitarian work and pastor training for people in Africa.”

Near the finale of the show, two members of The Elms jumped onstage, clapping out an interlude with the Jars of Clay.

The crowd was bouncing, the drummer was drumming, the Elms were echoing. It was a fun show.