Crazy – Gnarls Barkley – On The Street Funk cover feat. Dannielle DeAndrea!

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A funk band takes Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” straight to the sidewalk in Highland Park, California.

In November 2018, the funk collective Scary Pockets uploaded a live street performance of Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 hit “Crazy,” with Australian singer Dannielle DeAndrea taking the lead vocal. The band, known for turning familiar pop and rock songs into horn-driven funk workouts, filmed the cover outdoors in Highland Park rather than in a studio, letting passersby and city noise become part of the take. It’s one entry in the group’s ongoing weekly series of reworked mainstream songs, funded and shaped in part by their Patreon subscribers.

  • Scary Pockets, co-founded by Jack Conte and Ryan Lerman, released the “Crazy” cover in November 2018 as a live outdoor performance shot on the street in Highland Park, CA.
  • The lineup features Dannielle DeAndrea on lead vocals, Conte on keys, Lerman on guitar, Sam Wilkes on bass, Rob Humphreys on drums, Morgan Jones on sax, and Gabe Steiner on trumpet, with Kenton Chen, Mike G, and Rett Madison backing vocals.
  • Caleb Parker handled recording, mixing, and mastering on location, while Ricky Chavez shot and edited the video, which went up on Scary Pockets’ YouTube channel with support from their Patreon community.

Trading Psychedelic Soul for Street Funk

Gnarls Barkley’s original “Crazy” ran on a woozy, organ-soaked haze that made it a defining single of 2006. Scary Pockets strips out that psychedelic sheen and rebuilds the song around a live horn section and a pocket-heavy rhythm section, giving it a grittier, more physical feel than the version most listeners grew up with. Dannielle DeAndrea’s vocal carries the melody with more rasp and push than Cee Lo Green’s falsetto-leaning original, which is the point of the arrangement — Scary Pockets built its whole catalog on taking songs people know by heart and reintroducing them through a funk lens.

Sidewalk Performers and Their Instruments

The instrumental core is Jack Conte on keys and Ryan Lerman on guitar, the same duo who co-founded the project, backed by bassist Sam Wilkes and drummer Rob Humphreys locking down the groove. Saxophonist Morgan Jones and trumpeter Gabe Steiner supply the horn punches that replace the original’s synth textures, while Kenton Chen, Mike G, and Rett Madison stack harmonies behind DeAndrea’s lead. That’s an eight-person ensemble playing live, outdoors, with no studio isolation between them — a setup that leaves the rough edges of a street performance intact rather than polishing them out afterward.

Recorded live on the street in Highland Park, CA — no studio booth, no overdubs hiding the room.

Shot, Mixed, and Cut on Location

Caleb Parker engineered, mixed, and mastered the audio on-site, a tougher job on a public sidewalk than in a soundproofed room, while Ricky Chavez handled the cinematography and editing. The pairing of on-location audio capture with street cinematography is part of what separates Scary Pockets’ output from a typical studio cover video — the visual grit of Highland Park’s street matches the raw take of the horns and rhythm section rather than a slicker, staged aesthetic.

Part of a Bigger Patreon-Funded Project

The “Crazy” cover didn’t exist in isolation — it’s one installment in Scary Pockets’ weekly series of funk reinterpretations, a project sustained largely through fan support on Patreon, the platform Conte also runs as CEO. Backers get a say in which songs get covered next and can download stems and karaoke versions once a track drops, which is the engine behind the band’s steady release pace of familiar songs bent into new shapes.

Scary Pockets doesn’t slow down after a cover lands — the weekly cadence means another familiar song is already lined up for the same street-funk treatment, with Patreon backers voting on what’s next before the cameras even show up.

4.5 Total Score

User Rating: 4 (1 vote)
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