Soundcheck: Chickenfoot

This post originally appeared on my music column ‘The Crossroads’ on Dad-Blogs.com on June 16, 2009.

As we barrel towards the Summer of ‘09, Chickenfoot has dropped their debut album on the music world in an effort to provide us the soundtrack to our summer season.  Comprised of some of the best in music today, Chickenfoot features Sammy Hagar (Van Halen, The Waboritas) on vocals, Michael Anthony (Van Halen) on bass, Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers) on drums and percussion and legendary axe man Joe Satriani.

Their self titled debut is a fun, rocking time that shows that these heavyweights don’t take themselves to seriously.  Reminiscent of HSAS (Hagar’s early 80’s supergroup effort featuring Hagar, Neil Schon of Journey, bassist Kenny Aaronson and drummer Michael Shrieve who played with Santana), Chickenfoot’s music is very playful with a heavy dose of Chad Smith’s thundering drums and Satriani’s screaming guitar.  The album starts out a little heavier than expected on the track ‘Avenida Revolution’, but gets into a nice groove before slowing down for the ballad ‘Learning to Fall’.

At first pass if you didn’t know who you were listening to you would probably think it was a new Hagar era Van Halen album and that they discovered a fountain of youth.  Almost as if Eddie was trying to atone for the Gary Cherone debacle or the who are we really going to reunite with David Lee Roth or Hagar nonsense.  I’ll be the first to admit, it took me time to warm up to Hagar as the lead singer of Van Halen after Roth’s departure.  While the ‘Van Hagar’ albums aren’t as groundbreaking as Roth’s work with the band, they still provided the soundtrack to the summers of my youth and ‘Chickenfoot’ brought a little of that back for me.

If I have one criticism of the album it would be that Satriani’s wicked mad skills aren’t showcased to their fullest extent, although he is absolutely smoking on the track ‘Turning Left’.  I should preface this by saying that I’m a huge fan of his solo work.  His 1987 release ‘Surfing with the Alien’ is by far one of my favorite discs to have running while I’m working around the house.  Half of the trim and casework in my home was done while listening to Satriani’s music, but I would attribute some of his restraint to making the adjustment to the group dynamic.

All in all ‘Chickenfoot’ is a great rock and roll album that would be a good addition to your collection if you are so inclined.  I gave the whole disc a listen (there is a listening party on their website) and all of the tracks are decent, but the ones that really stick out to me are ‘Sexy Little Thing’, ‘Oh Yeah’, ‘Running Out’ and the aforementioned ‘Turning Left’.  If you give it a listen, or ultimately pick it up, drop me a line or a comment and let me know what you think.

Who should be on the next Soundcheck? Leave a comment or drop me an email atpj@realmendriveminivans.com so I can work on it for a future article.  Also, if you’re new here, consider joining Dad-Blogs and grabbing the RSS feed so you can get this and all of the other awesome columns delivered fresh directly to you.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed the ride!

Tagged as: Chad Smith, David Lee Roth, Gary Cherone, Joe Satriani, Kenny Aaronson, Michael Anthony, Sammy Hagar, Van Halen