Watch Keanu Reeves’ Band Dogstar Play Their First TV Performance In 23 Years On Kimmel
The lead guest on last night’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live was Jon Hamm, who’s great on the new season of Fargo. I wonder if it was weird for Hamm to arrive in the green room and realize that he was nowhere near the most famous person on the show — that the musical-guest band’s bass player was motherfucking Keanu Reeves.
Keanu Reeves recently reunited with Dogstar, the alt-rock band that he helped form in the ’90s, when he was already a massive movie star. Last month, Dogstar released Somewhere Between The Palm Trees And Power Lines, their first album since 2000. During their initial run, Reeves didn’t seem like he wanted to draw too much attention to his band, but they’ve been doing a real promotional push for the new LP. Last night, Dogstar were on Kimmel, giving what appears to be their first TV performance since a July 2000 episode of Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Back then, Jimmy Kimmel was still doing Win Ben Stein’s Money and The Man Show on Comedy Central.
On last night’s Kimmel, Dogstar played their recent single “Breach” — the one with the brief but fun Keanu Reeves bass solo. It’s cool to see Keanu up there, stoically playing bass with his old buddies, even if it’s hard to shake the idea that he might suddenly use that bass to dispatch a would-be assassin. Watch the performance below.
All three members of Dogstar are also guests on the latest episode of Bandsplain host Yasi Salek’s great new interview podcast 24 Question Party People. I haven’t listened to the episode yet, but here’s Keanu Reeves talking about Discharge, which is one of the coolest things I’ve heard in a minute.
Somewhere Between The Palm Trees And Power Lines is out now on Dillon Street.