DES MOINES — Sometimes a band doesn’t fully create a concert experience — it also depends on the people around you.

With most of the crowd at The House of Bricks, 3839 Merle Hay Road, Des Moines, being members of other bands or good friends of those performing, it felt more like a private jam session than a concert.

Wednesday night, bands The Wedding and Offering, along with poet Bradley Hathaway, took turns on the stage at The House of Bricks.

The bands rocked the stage with intensity and energy that was worthy of screaming crowds of thousands.

“You can’t expect much from a small crowd,” says Alex Arthur, a freshman at Ames High School. “They just sit there, enjoy the music and headbang a little.”

Offering warmed up the stage with catchy, punk-rock songs sweetened with moments of 3-part harmony.

Six teenagers jumped around in front of the band, singing along and knowing exactly what part of every song to rock out to.

Stephanie Hoogerwerf, a sophomore from Des Moines Christian High School, first heard Offering at a Christian youth conference.

“They have a really good stage presence, and good lyrics,” Hoogerwerf says.

Hoogerwerf says she didn’t mind being one of the only ones into the music.

“We’ve got to support them; I mean, we are the only ones who came,” Hoogerwerf says. Her friends mumble something behind her and they all laugh.

“Yeah, and they’re hot,” she says.

Ears still ringing with rock, the room fell silent as poet Bradley Hathaway took the stage.

All ears in the audience focused on the melodic pacing of Hathaway’s words. Hathaway roamed around the room, standing on chairs and looking into individual faces.

“No man, we don’t clap. We snap fingers,” Hathaway says after his first poem. Hathaway provoked the audience with several poems including “Silence,” about how far away God can seem sometimes.

There was also a lot of laughter, especially with Hathaway’s final poem, “The Annoying Hardcore Dude Who Goes Too Far.”

The Wedding took over the stage next with a high-energy and meaningful performance.

Simpson College students Kelsey Christianson, 21, and Asche Rider, 19, both came to see their friends in Offering, and were pleasantly surprised by The Wedding.

“I loved it. We both really like the keyboard. It adds another layer [to their music] and makes it really interesting,” Christianson said.

According to the girls, they couldn’t understand many of the lyrics, but they understood what the band stood for through what they said between songs.

“I really felt like I was starting to get to know them,” Rider says. “It’s like a dialogue.”

The Wedding slowed it down for its song “But a Breath,” and lead singer Kevin Kiehn explained that it was about wasting your life on things that don’t matter.

He told of how a friend of theirs died shortly after they wrote the song, and as they played, the crowd listened like a consoling friend.

“He was really opening himself up,” Christianson says.