For his alt rock band Dogstar, Keanu Reeves is just 'the bass player'

Dogstar Brian Bowen Smith/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Brian Bowen Smith/Courtesy of the artist

Dogstar

Brian Bowen Smith/Courtesy of the artist

A lot has changed in the world since 2002. Groceries cost more. Everyone has a smartphone. There have been three sequels to the Matrix movie. Yet, through it all, one thing has stayed the same: Today's World Cafe guests have stayed friends.

Bret Domrose, Rob Mailhouse and Keanu Reeves make up Dogstar, an alternative rock band that kicked off in the mid-'90s. They toured all over, opening for artists like Bon Jovi and playing festivals like Glastonbury, all while Reeves was becoming a movie star.

Dogstar "broke up" in 2002, releasing their appropriately named album Happy Ending that year. But in this session, you'll hear how they never really broke up. They talk about how natural it felt to make a new album, called Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees, two decades after their last one, even if the world — and their own lives — had changed.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.