Just a few years ago Jars of Clay was touring and playing small venues on their own or doing an energy-lacking opening set for Michael W. Smith.

The band has definitely come a long way, now headlining their own tour and playing their instruments as professionally as ever in a mostly energetic, live performance Saturday in front of a nearly sold-out Stephens Auditorium.

Before the band poured on stage, openers David Wilcox and Burlap to Cashmere did their best to warm up an already overly-excited Stephens crowd.

Wilcox stood alone on the stage, playing his acoustic guitar and singing mostly out of tune. Between songs, his excessive, floaty monologues went right over most of the crowd’s heads.

But as soon as Wilcox left the stage, Burlap to Cashmere came right on, and rocked from the beginning to the end of their set. Filled with impressive guitar solos and outrageous foot-tapping percussion, the mix of three guitarists and two drummers proved Burlap to be the top musicians of the night.

Ending their set with the hit “Basic Instruction,” Burlap left the stage to a standing ovation for what the crowd later learned would be the best overall set of the show.

Jars of Clay opened their set with “Unforgetful You,” the first single off their new album “If I Left the Zoo,” and went into a slew of newer songs before venturing into some songs from their self-titled debut.

Encouraging the crowd to sing along, the song “Love Song For a Savior” spawned the audience to participate with the lyrics “I want to fall in love with you.”

But the show began slowing down, and ended up coming to a complete stop altogether with the song “Worlds Apart,” that just involved frontman Dan Haseltine and guitarist Stephen Mason standing in the spotlight.

The show began picking up again but never really reached the energy it once had until very late in the performance.

When “Like A Child” started pumping out of the group’s instruments, it was as if some medics yelled “Clear,” rubbed their paddles together and pushed them on the chests’ of the audience members, pumping an automatic shock of energy into an almost somnolent crowd.

Haseltine’s vocals stayed pretty solid throughout, though they were sometimes hard to hear. The rest of the band’s back up vocals and instrument play were strong and added a great feel of fullness to the group’s music.

The encore consisted of a revamped, slower version of “Liquid” and the much anticipated crowd favorite, “Flood.” But they ended the night with a slower praise song, which actually brought the crowd back down to that low-energy level they were once at.

The maturity of the Jars was shown through the way they worked the crowd and how they were able to change up the older songs. And those now classic songs proved to be the crowd favorites, in turn making them the highlights of the Jars’ set.

The energy was there