Alt Rockers Dogstar (featuring Keanu Reeves) Bring Their Reunion Tour to Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl with Archer Oh, Dec. 20 & 21

While best known for his decades-spanning film career, leading popular franchises like The Matrix, John Wick, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, multifaceted talent Keanu Reeves has long been a musician as well, playing bass in ’90s alt rock and grunge outfit Dogstar. Initially formed in 1991, as Reeves’ film career was already on the rise (he starred in classics Point Break, My Own Private Idaho, and Bill & Ted sequel Bogus Journey all that same year), after a chance meeting in a supermarket with drummer (and also working actor, in projects like Sports Night and Days of Our Lives) Robert Mailhouse, who he bonded with over a shared love of hockey, Dogstar was intially rounded out by guitarist and singer Gregg Miller, before Bret Domrose, who’d joined in 1994 as an additional guitarist and backing vocalist, stopped into the frontman role upon Miller’s departure in 1995, a year before Dogstar released their debut full-length, Our Little Visionary.

Although Reeves was splitting his time with a plethora of prominent film roles throughout the ’90s, Dogstar found time to play shows around the world, open for artists like David Bowie, Joan Jett, and Bon Jovi, and regularly perform around their native Los Angeles, where they notably shared the stage other then-up-and-comers like Weezer, who played their first show ever opening for Dogstar in 1992. The trio’s sophomore album, Happy Ending, arrived in 2000, in between cameos (as themselves) in a pair of films: 1999’s Me and Will and 2005’s Ellie Parker. Popular, but never massively so, Dogstar’s second album spawned singles like “Halo” and their cover of the Carpenter’s “Superstar,” but after some more touring and recognition, they had stopped recording and performing by 2002, effectively going on public hiatus for the next 20 years.

Still remaining close friends in the interim, Dogstar would occasionally jam in private over the years, but it wasn’t until the Covid lockdown of 2020, isolated and with a lot of unexpected freetime, that they began to play together again in a more serious way, with months of songwriting sessions resulting in enough new material and a newfound spark to make a new album. Enlisting producer Dave Trumfio (Wilco, Built to Spill, The Pulsars), they crafted what would become recent third LP (and first in 23 years) Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees, which builds on their classic, ’90s alt rock sound with new maturity and polish. After formally announcing their reunion last year, the trio returned to stage back in May at the BottleRock Napa Valley festival, and are currently in the midst of their biggest national tour ever, which concludes this week, Dec. 20 & 21 at Nashville’s own Brooklyn Bowl, marking their first time ever performing in Music City!

Though tickets are officially listed as sold out, we’re still seeing some face value tickets still available on Ticketmaster here (12/20) and here (12/21), with further tickets listed on resale sites for even less (as always, buy at your own risk from third-party sites), so if you didn’t manage to get them when they initially went on sale, you can definitely still see the show! California indie and garage rock outfit Archer Oh will open both notes, and you can hear more from Dogstar below.

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