What time is it? Party band Snacktime is playing the Firefly Festival — and all over Philly.

No matter when the question is posed, the answer is always the same.

“What time is it? …. Snacktime!”

Michael Spearman did the asking last week in Rittenhouse Square, bounding about in shorts and a backward baseball cap, holding his trombone in one hand as he urged the crowd to get loud.

“What time is it?! … SNACKTIME!!!”

Burly bandleader Sam Gellerstein pumped out bass lines on his sousaphone. Drummer Austin Marlow cracked his snare. Guitarist Larry Monroe Jr. and trumpet player Eric Sherman locked into Prince’s “Kiss.” Passersby and dancers dropped bills into buckets at the band’s feet.

Snacktime: They just want your extra time and your … [insert “Kiss” funk riff here] … tips.

That was the scene on a recent evening, where the tireless, anything-goes Philly band mixed their own compositions with covers of Earth, Wind & Fire, James Brown, The Beatles, The Commodores, and ABBA, playing outdoors in the public space where they first came together in 2020.

In two years’ time, Snacktime — whose core members include tenor saxophonist Ben Stocker and alto sax player Yesseh Furaha-Ali — have become the most visible band in Philadelphia.

They’re everywhere. The band has performed at halftime of Sixers games 10 times, and played the Philadelphia Flower Show. They recorded their debut album, Sounds From the Street: Live! at Rittenhouse Soundworks in Germantown in March and celebrated its release at the Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia in July.

Last weekend, Snacktime wore faux Sixers jerseys while warming up for Nathaniel Rateliff and The Revivalists at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion at the XPoNential Music Festival.On Saturday, they’re at the Sisterly Love Food Fair at LOVE Park, and the Philly Arts & Music Festival at the Navy Yard — and a wedding later that night.

On Sunday, they return to the Firefly Festival in Dover, Del., playing the Treehouse Stage at 2:15 p.m.

Every Snacktime show is improvised, with the players deciding on the fly what’s next. “It’s like a tailored suit,” Gellerstein says, fashioned to fit the moment. Their energy and musical accomplishment make Snacktime the right band at the right time, shaking Philadelphians out of a pandemic torpor, turning strangers into fans.

“What we are is a party band,” says Spearman, a Camden native who gathered with his bandmates in the Old City offices of the band’s publicist. “We play for people’s enjoyment.We’ve made our cultural stamp on Philadelphia. People know us, people see Sam walking down the street and go ‘Snacktime!’ That happens all the time when they see his tuba.”

“It’s all about the impact they have on audiences,” says Bruce Warren, program director of WXPN-FM (88.5). The band did an hour-plus Free at Noon at World Cafe Live in June before playing XPoNential’s biggest stage this month.

Warren first saw Snacktime at Ardmore Rock N’ Ride outside Ardmore Music Hall in the summer of 2021.

“They led the crowd marching across Lancaster Ave. They were getting people hyped, and it was totally exciting. … Every time I see them, the most non-passionate person wakes up. That’s the Snacktime thing.”

Gellerstein grew up in Fort Lauderdale with Stocker, playing in a ska band called Enrique’s Revenge. They separately moved to Philadelphia to study music.

Gellerstein was teaching music in Philly public schools when Dan McLaughlin of Mission Taqueria invited him to get a band together for a Friendsgiving party in November 2019.

He brought Stocker along, and found leading his own band to be “much more fulfilling” than sideman gigs. Then in January 2020, Gellerstein and Stocker did an event with their chef friend Jen Zavala of Juana Tamale at Underground Arts. They called the party Snacktime.

After another event in March, Gellerstein and Stocker planned a Snacktime series, with different chefs each month.

Lockdown “was the death knell” for that concept, Gellerstein says. But as the shutdown stretched on, he started thinking about outdoor performance.

With Philly trombonist Jeff Bradshaw — who he had opened up for at his first paid Philadelphia gig in 2012 — Gellerstein produced events in the summer of 2020 called Clarion Call for Justice.

Over 100 horn players gathered at the Philadelphia Museum of Art “to use musicians’ voices to raise awareness about racism and police brutality” after the death of George Floyd.

Then in September 2020, as outdoor dining flourished on Rittenhouse Square, Snacktime Philly started playing there two or three times a week.

Starting at 12th and Sansom, “we would march through all the outdoor dining, and then park ourselves in front of Parc on Rittenhouse,” Stocker says. Crowds grew, and the band started bringing in $1,200 to $1,500 a night.

Long nights led to tickets issued to band members by the Philadelphia Parking Authority for parking in two-hour time-limit spaces. It also inspired one of the band’s most popular originals, entitled “F— the PPA.”

Busking created business, and a busy schedule of usually playing at least one gig a night, five or six days a week.

“That’s how we got the Flower Show,” says Gellerstein of playing the park shouted-out in Sounds From the Street’s “Littenhouse.” “That’s where the Sixers saw us. That’s where Questlove saw us.” (The Roots’ drummer sat in with the band on Broad Street after receiving an honorary degree from the University of the Arts in May.)

The band does gigs of all shapes and sizes, many food-focused, like the New York Food & Wine Festival next month with Zahav’s Michael Solomonov. “We do weddings,” say Stocker. “We do birthday parties all the time. We do divorce parties.”

With trumpets, trombones, saxes, and sousaphones, it seems natural to call Snacktime a “brass band,” linking them to New Orleans tradition.

That’s a misnomer, says Marlow, since their repertoire rarely visits Crescent City, save for a New Orleans-style “Happy Birthday.” Stocker defines their range as “from Elton John to Lil Jon.”

Also, a stationary drum kit and electric guitar distinguish the group from the Second Line style. That’s really “why we’re not a brass band,” says Marlow, who grew up in the Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia and got a musical education at the Metropolitan Baptist Church, where his parents sang.

What they are is a party band of seasoned musicians, all still in their 20s except for Sherman, who’s 34. Marlow has toured with Philly soul greats The Stylistics. Monroe Jr., from North Philly, was touring with Village People when the shutdown kicked in.

Furaha-Ali, a West Philly native, picked up a sax at 8, after his parents took him to see Jamie Foxx in Ray and Ray Charles sax player David “Fathead” Newman at Zanzibar Blue.

He’s been playing the instrument — “and playing the hell out of it,” says Marlow — ever since. Furaha-Ali also shows off a supple singing voice on the new Snacktime single “Tipbucket Luvr”

What makes Snacktime special, Monroe Jr. says, is the band members’ closeness. (Besides the core septet, Gellerstein says Snacktime draws from more than 25 players who sometimes join in.)

“These are my friends, not just bandmates,” Monroe says. “We’re a band of brothers.”

Snacktime’s early pandemic origin remains a source of strength. “It was a time when nobody could do anything. But we were doing things,” says Marlow. “Playing together in that setting made us all that much closer. It happened because of when it happened.”

“Realistically, we did want to make some money,” Gellerstein says. “But really, we just wanted to play. We wanted to get together. Since then, we’ve always kept the energy up. And just to see the faces and the joy and the dancing is all you can ask for. It’s important to show the same love to the city that it showed us.”