Chickenfoot just friends who like to play together and have a good time

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It takes a strong man to cry, and Michael Anthony isn’t afraid to admit that he sheds a tear upon occasion.

Like when he has to sell one of his cars.

“They’re all like my kids, man,” Anthony says of his prized auto collection. “I become attached to them.”

Anthony currently owns 11 cars, his latest acquisition being a 1957 Chevy Nomad wagon that he likes to take the beach.

“It’s a really cool summer cruising car,” Anthony says, speaking from his hotel room on a tour stop in St. Louis, noting that he prefers vintage rides that he can work on. “I’ve got a couple of Ferraris and you can’t do anything on those except maybe check the air in the tires.”

Anthony’s a hands-on kind of guy: he doesn’t warehouse his cars like some collectors, he drives them.

“I go out and have fun in all my cars,” he says. “It’s a lot better vice than a lot of other ones that I could be diving into. That’s the excuse I tell my wife, ‘Hey, look, at least I’ve got something to show for the money that I spent.'”

Anthony’s passion for hot rods relates, in a roundabout way, to his current project, rock supergroup Chickenfoot.

It was Chickenfoot frontman Sammy Hagar who got Anthony into auto collecting when they first met in the mid-’80s.

It helped form a bond between the two that persists to this day.

And, like his cars, Chickenfoot is done purely for kicks for Anthony.

The group (rounded out by guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Kenny Aronoff, who tours with the band when their original drummer, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is busy with his other group), debuted in 2008 and released their second record, “Chickenfoot III,” last September.

It s tongue-in-cheek title is the band’s attempt at avoiding the cliched sophomore slump, which they do with an album that plays to the band’s obvious strengths.

“Chickenfoot III” comes with plenty of the expected trademarks from this bunch: Hagar and Anthony harmonizing together like they’ve done for decades, Satriani soloing like an electric current was being passed through his fingers and plenty of feel-good jams where Hagar sings of driving too fast, chasing women of ill repute and arriving at the Pearly Gates in flip flops and a pair of shades.

The party does stop, intermittently, on songs like “Three and a Half Letters,” which was inspired by actual letters the band received from fans – a homeless widower, a young soldier who returned from war in Afghanistan, an unemployed father of two, a nine year old who lives on the streets – all asking for help.

Hagar sing-talks during the verses, like he’s reading the letters themselves, over a roiling bass line before the chorus kicks in.

“I need a job,” Hagar then bellows, frustration forming a lump in his throat that he seems determined to shout out.

“Sammy would receive a lot of letters from people who were down on their luck, war veterans, homeless people in general, asking for help,” Anthony says of the song’s origins. “He felt really strongly about doing something there. I remember getting a call and he said he wanted to do a spoken word type of song about all of this. It’s not like we’re trying to preach, it’s more like just making people aware of what’s going on.”

These more serious moments aside, for the most part, “Chickenfoot III” is the kind of record that goes best with beer in hand.

It sounds like a group of buddies getting together and jamming out some tunes – which is pretty much what it is.

“It’s not like a pre-fab supergroup where you can have four very talented musicians but if the chemistry’s not there between each other, all you’re going to get is four guys trying to out-do each other,” Anthony says. “We’ve all known each other for quite some time, so getting together was just four friends who all of a sudden had the opportunity to all play together and said, ‘Wow, man, this is really great.’ ”

Anthony’s enthusiasm is palpable as he speaks.

He comes across as a carefree, affable dude, somehow both excitable and laid-back at once.

You could say the same of Chickenfoot, a band that’s all about forgetting the past and not worrying about a future.

“We could have gone out there and played Van Halen, Satriani and Chili Peppers songs, but we didn’t want to do that,” Anthony says. “We never really had the intention of getting together and doing a record, much less a tour, and it just kind of kept snowballing into what happened. We try not to put any kind of pressure ourselves. It’s not what this band is about. It’s purely about having fun.”

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@review journal.com or 702-383-0476.