Keanu Reeves and his rock band Dogstar play three Philly-area shows this week

For Keanu Reeves, 1991 was a very good year.

The future star of The Matrix and John Wick franchises made three memorable movies — Point Break, My Own Private Idaho, and Bill & Red’s Bogus Journey. He also met his friend Robert Mailhouse, whom he’s still playing music with 35 years later in a band that has three shows in the Philadelphia region in the next week.

Dogstar, the alternative rock band that Reeves and Mailhouse play in along with singer-guitarist Brett Domrose, will perform in support of their new album All in Now at Union Transfer on Wednesday, at Sounds Waves at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City on Friday, and at the Hershey Theatre on Aug. 18.

Reeves, who was born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, was a standout hockey player in high school. At age 20, he moved to Los Angeles, where he introduced himself to Mailhouse in a grocery store.

“We lived in the same neighborhood, and we went to the same grocery store,” recalled Reeves, who plays bass, talking via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “And he was wearing a Detroit Red Wings sweatshirt. I asked him if he knew where there was a pickup game.

“From that came a fast friendship. I had a house that had a drum set and bass amp and a guitar amp, and Robert was playing drums and keyboards. So that’s the genesis of the rhythm section.”

“Keanu was a goaltender, which was really hard to find in Los Angeles,” said Mailhouse, picking up the story. An actor who has had roles in Days of Our Lives, and CSI, he also joined the call from his own home in L.A.

“I remember I went back to the Thursday night skate in Burbank and told the guys, ‘I think I might have found a goaltender.’ And then when Keanu showed up, he was really good.”

Before Mailhouse, now 64, and Reeves, 61, played music, they played hockey. Dogstar was first fronted by singer Greg Miller, who led the band on a 1995 tour opening for Bon Jovi in Australia and New Zealand. But by the time the band’s debut album, Our Little Visionary, came out in 1996, Miller had left the band and Domrose — a former member of legendary punk band the Nuns — had taken over frontman duties.

That version of Dogstar released one more album, Happy Ending, in 2000, and then lost momentum, breaking up two years later.

The split wasn’t caused by tension among the musicians, said Domrose, 57, a film composer who joined the Zoom call from his house in L.A. “We’d been going through the meat grinder with different record labels. It wears you out.”

There was also a little hiccup.

“Keanu had a movie career that was taking off to a new level” — the actor played Neo in the first Matrix movie in 1999 — “so we just felt like maybe it was time for a break.”

The trio remained friends, with Reeves briefly playing bass in another Mailhouse band called Becky. But they mainly pursued other paths, until the pandemic.

“You rethink your life,” said Mailhouse. “You get together and find you have all this time and less distractions. That put us all in a good mood to get back and try some stuff.”

Reeves says he never had rock-star ambitions, other than “playing air guitar on a tennis racket,” a la his character in the Bill & Ted movies. “But when I was 22, I went down to the Guitar Center on Sunset and bought a bass.”

He’s an anomaly among actors — unlike say, Jared Leto’s in 30 Seconds to Mars or Jamie Foxx and Kiefer Sutherland, who have recorded under their own names — in that he stays out of the spotlight, content to simply play bass and sometimes sing backup vocals.

Reeves’ rumbling bass is the first thing heard as All in Now kicks off with “Math.” But he’s essentially a supporting player in a power trio that refers to itself as “a brotherhood.” There’s a parallel there to the position Reeves favored in hockey, which also put the good of the team ahead of individual glory (and wore a mask).

“It is kind of a similar thing,” Domrose said to Reeves. “You are the last line of defense as a bass player and a goalie. If the bass player drops out, you’ve got nothing.

“He’s the melody of the team,” said Mailhouse.

“Oh my God —,” Reeves said jokingly expressing discomfort at being analyzed by his bandmates as he sat in a bookshelf-lined room, bass by his side. “Enough about the bass player! We’re coming to Philly! We’re gonna rock! August 12!”

When Domrose, Mailhouse, and Reeves got together to play during the pandemic, Reeves says, they realized “we all missed it.”

“We plugged in, and Robert picked up his sticks and Brett put on his guitar … There it was.”

“You slide into your old comfortable slippers,” said Domrose. “I felt it right away.”

Dogstar released its third album Somewhere Between the Power Lines and the Palm Trees in 2023. Since then, the band has been a steady concern, headlining shows and doing festival dates in the U.S. and Europe.

All In Now is a rugged yet melodic grunge-adjacent album that would sound right at home in the mid-1990s alongside Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, and early Radiohead.

When asked what favorite bands they have in common, Domrose cites David Bowie and Reeves names the Replacements, referring to the Paul Westerberg-fronted 1980s rock band, not the 2000 football comedy he starred in.

All in Now was recorded with veteran producer Nick Launey, who outfitted Dogstar with a hard-hitting if not terribly original sound. The band is genuinely thrilled that such an esteemed producer signed up with them.

“I mean all this work he’s done with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more recently, Amyl and the Sniffers,” said Mailhouse. “All these great bands, and now little old Dogstar. I think we got lucky.”

Reeves’ movie-star career continues apace: He’s due in director Tim Miller’s Shiver next year. “Sharks, time machine, Groundhog Day … Fun!” is how the actor has summed up the movie, in which he plays a Caribbean smuggler.

But the friends are also committed to keeping Dogstar going as a working band.

All in Now’s title sounds like a statement of commitment, “but it’s not really a narrative of us,” said Domrose. “But unconsciously it does reflect where the band is now.”

“It’s got an energy to it, right?,” said Reeves. “All in Now is f— awesome! I think we came off tour and we were like ‘Let’s rock!’

“Making music can be so much fun,” he said. “The creativity, being together, the three of us in a room. To be able to make a record, and then to tour and do it again. I feel really grateful. This is our second album since we got back together. It’s exciting. So let’s make a third. Keep it going!”

Dogstar at Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden at 8 p.m. Wednesday, utphilly.com; Hard Rock Hotel Casino, 1000 Boardwalk, Atlantic City at 9 p.m. Friday, casino.hardrock.com; and Hershey Theatre, 15 E. Caracas Ave., Hershey, hersheyentertainment.com