Sneezy brings Halloween-eve funk back to Asheville Music Hall

The Chicago-area funk-soul jam band has played Asheville more than anywhere else in our records, and it's back on Patton Avenue Friday night.

Some bands tour through Asheville. Sneezy keeps coming back. The funk-soul jam band from the Chicago area has played Asheville more than any other city in our records, 15 shows and counting, and it's back this Friday, October 30, at Asheville Music Hall on Patton Avenue. That's the night before Halloween, which in downtown Asheville means the costumes are already out.

The details: music starts at 9pm, the show is 18 and up, and tickets are on Etix. Asheville Music Hall is at 31 Patton Ave., right in the middle of downtown, and it's a room of a few hundred, small enough that a dance-floor band can fill it wall to wall.

That's the point with Sneezy. The band describes itself on its own site as a funk-soul jam band that blends funk grooves, neo-soul rhythms and hip-hop beats, and it's built around two voices: Brett O'Connor on lead vocals and harmonica, and Jack Holland on vocals and acoustic guitar. That mix of a jam band's stretch with a soul band's hooks is part of why it plays well in a town that takes both seriously. People come for the songs and stay for the long instrumental turns.

Some bands tour through Asheville. Sneezy keeps coming back.

This room knows them. Asheville Music Hall has booked Sneezy before, including a New Year's Eve party with Future Joy, the kind of booking a venue saves for a band it trusts to keep a room moving past midnight. A Friday slot on Halloween weekend falls in the same category.

If you haven't caught them yet, the band's catalog is the place to start. Sneezy lists three albums on its site: the live record The Echo Sessions Live, Open Doors and 440 W Cook. The live one is the better preview of what Friday will feel like: songs as starting points, not endpoints. We didn't find word of a new 2026 release, so expect a set drawn from the band's existing songs and whatever it has worked up on the road.

Asheville has no shortage of jam bands, homegrown or passing through. What makes a touring act part of the furniture is showing up again and again. Fifteen shows is a relationship. Friday is another chance to see why it keeps going.

Wear the costume a night early. Nobody at a Sneezy show is going to mind.

Sources: Asheville Music Hall: Sneezy (ashevillemusichall.com); Asheville Music Hall: Sneezy with Future Joy NYE Party (ashevillemusichall.com); Asheville Music Hall: venue (ashevillemusichall.com); Etix: Sneezy at Asheville Music Hall (etix.com); Sneezy: Band (sneezymusic.com); Sneezy Music (sneezymusic.com); Sneezy: Brett O'Connor (sneezymusic.com)