Part-Time Rockers: Movie Stars With Rock And Roll Bands

16. The Abiders

His friends weren’t surprised when Jeff Bridges won an Oscar for his portrayal of a flamed-out country singer in 2009’s Crazy Heart. Bridges was obsessed with music as a teen, but acting tugged, too. “I had success with acting, so I went that way,” explains Bridges, 64, shown headlining a gig in 2013. “But I always carried my guitar with me.”

17. Kevin Costner and Modern West

Costner started his country-rock group at the urging of his second wife, Christine. “I get a lot just from the camaraderie,” says Costner. “Some kind of bond comes with just being in the room together.” Between Costner’s movie shoots, Modern West tours worldwide, as in this 2013 gig in Russia.

18. The Copper Bottom Band

As a 10-year-old piano student in England, American blues and jazz hit Laurie “like an electric shock.” (Those genres are the focus of his second CD, Didn’t It Rain.) “There’s music in acting and there’s acting in music,” notes the 54-year-old “Dr. House” of blues, shown singing on stage in 2013. “[Both are] about storytelling and inhabiting a character.”

19. The Sharks

Is that Dennis Quaid or guitar great Alvin Lee? The actor, 60, lobbied hard to do his own vocals in Great Balls of Fire!, the 1989 biopic in which he channeled rocking pianist Jerry Lee Lewis. The Killer nixed that notion, but Quaid still loves to front his party band. “I don’t really want a career in music,” he concedes. “But I’ve played since I was a kid, and I always will.”

20. The Accelerators

Willis (with bassist Tad Wadhams) belts out a blues tune at the Kennedy Space Center. The Die Hard star, 59, has played music since the 1980s and blows a mean blues harp. “I learned to dance to Motown in fifth grade,” he told an interviewer, “so that is my sensibility of music.”

…There is a bonus actor in this list, and his band simply goes by the name of:

“P”

Johnny Depp primarily played bass in the short-lived alternative/psychedelic rock band “P”, which featured Gibby Haynes from Butthole Surfers, as well as Bill Carter, Sal Jenco, and a rotating cast of contributors (including, again, Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers). The band was in existence from 1993 to 1995 and recorded one self-titled full-length album.

P regularly performed at The Viper Room, a small club on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood which Depp partly owned from its opening in 1993 until 2004. In fact, P was performing onstage while River Phoenix died on the sidewalk outside the club — rumor has it that they were in the middle of their song “Michael Stipe,” which includes the line, “I finally talked to Michael Stipe, but I didn’t get to see his car/Him and River Phoenix were leaving on the road tomorrow.”

Can you think of any others? Tell us in the comments section below.

Source: (Maxim, AARP, Verbicide)