Keanu Reeves’ Dogstar band reunite for concert after 20 years
LOS ANGELES – After a 20-year hiatus, actor Keanu Reeves has reunited with his band Dogstar to perform on stage.
The American alt-rock band – comprising Bret Domrose, 54, on guitar and vocals; Robert Mailhouse, 61, on drums; and Reeves, 58, on bass and back-up vocals – played at the BottleRock Napa Valley festival last Saturday.
Before taking to the stage, Reeves got some advice on returning to the stage from bandmate Mailhouse.
“He was just super positive. He was like, ‘Listen to the music. Just be present in the song, and it will go from there,’” Reeves said to newspaper San Francisco Chronicle.
Mailhouse and Reeves met in a supermarket in 1991 and formed Dogstar, way before the actor starred in movies such as The Matrix franchise (1999 to 2021) and the four John Wick flicks (2014 to present).
The band members kept up their friendship even as Reeves became a Hollywood star, and frequently met up to jam together.
Their comeback show went well, with the trio performing songs from their past two albums – Our Little Visionary (1996) and Happy Ending (2000) – as well as new music from their upcoming album, including Glimmer and Flowers.
In an interview with Billboard magazine last week, Reeves said: “I missed playing together, I missed writing together, I missed doing shows together. It’s something I’ve always missed. Once we started to play, and it felt good, and really positive and creative, that’s when it was like, ‘Okay, let’s make this happen.’”
He also dismissed talk that this was a side hustle to his prolific acting career.
“It’s not ‘make time for it’,” he said. “It’s something that’s part of my life.”
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