Picture this: a stage set with the standard band instruments. The drum set slightly elevated, the tuned bass standing at attention, the piano slightly off to one side — not at all uncommon sights for a stage preparing for a show. Yet in the middle sits an unfamiliar object: the pedal steel guitar. This will be anything but a common performance.

Enter Robert Randolph and his entourage that completes the Family Band.

The group has come quite a long way, in so many respects of the phrase. A few years ago, it played its rock-jam-band sounds for a small crowd consisting of little more than the respectful visitors wandering in and out of the Rathskeller. Since then, the group has graced The Tonight Show and was featured in USA Today. It toured with Eric Clapton during the summer, entertained the masses at Summerfest’s Encore show and performed at the Grammys, all in the last year alone.

Rolling Stone named Randolph one of its “100 Greatest Guitarists” and the Warner Brothers release of the album Unclassified still garners positive reviews.

The concert takes place Sunday, Feb. 20, at the Wisconsin Union Theater in Memorial Union. Starting at 7:30 p.m., Robert Randolph and the Family Band will kick off their performance. Tickets for the show are available for $22 in advance and $24 on the day of the show.

The band’s personal history tells of the great lengths the quartet, cousins Robert and Marcus Randolph, Danyel Morgan and Jason Crosby, have come. Though their music lacks an explicit religiosity, their sounds are a direct result of spiritual experience.

Growing up in urban New Jersey, with overcrowded schools and dismal streets, Randolph’s high school experiences were not particularly nurturing. “I’m talking about murder and crime and drugs,” he has said. “As a child, when you’re around all these things, you somehow become a part of it because you’re curious. And I became a part of it, too.”

Though his parents were both active in the House of God Church in Orange, N.J., his mother a minister and his father a deacon, religion could only momentarily pull Randolph away from his friends and the events on the streets. That is until the advent of his interest in the steel guitar.

“To be honest, I just wanted to check it out at first,” Randolph has said. “I played it for a month, and then I didn’t touch it for another year because it was so difficult. Then, when I was 17, I went back to it, and for some reason it started feeling really special to me. I spent hours practicing on it. It became my everything.” That sudden aspiration to play was furthered by time spent with the father of his stepmother, the legendary Ted Beard, in Detroit. Upon returning to New Jersey, Randolph found himself constantly playing in the church services.

Listening to other bands, including the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, taught Randolph to take the passion he played with in church and generalize it so that a wider audience might appreciate his sounds. While the success of Unclassified proves the band has accomplished such a task, the energy and enthusiasm searing through the stereo are only a fraction of that which the live performance offers.

Seeing the group in person is truly an experience unlike any other. The liveliness Randolph and the Family Band offers is unparalleled. Jumping up and dancing around, if Randolph could play the pedal steel easier standing up, he probably would.

Though the steel guitar is certainly Randolph’s forte, he is skilled with a variety of other instruments. A highlight of the show often comes when the four band members make a trade, each showing his capacity for every aspect that makes their sound great. Cousin Danyel wails out the rhythm on the drums as well as Marcus does, and Randolph pounds the organ keys as deftly as Jason.

Not only are the sounds surging with energy, but the boys onstage are unstoppable as they let the spirit catch them. It is possible Randolph does not quit smiling for even a second during a whole set. Grateful for salvation and the ability to transform it into a secular appreciation, Robert Randolph and the Family Band only want the opportunity to share it.

Such enthusiasm should be warmly welcomed in the face of these closing winter days. One cannot exit the auditorium from such a show without experiencing that transfer of spirit. It may not lead one toward a sanctuary, but even the greatest pessimist will find herself walking away with a smile from the surreal energy.