Upon finding out actor Keanu Reeves is in a rock band, the first thought that crosses the mind is rooted in cynicism.

And Kevin Bacon? Learning that he and his sibling Michael are in an Americana band called The Bacon Brothers maybe de-serves an eye roll or two.

But the pair has just released Can't Complain, their third not-too-bad album in seven years -- surely the cynicism has subsided by now.

"We have definitely not won over all the cynics," says Kevin, 43-year-old star of films ranging from Footloose and Tremors to Hollow Man and Apollo 13.

"Definitely not. That's an ongoing process that will probably never end.

"I myself have a healthy dose of cynicism when I hear about an actor having a band. But that's the nature of the beast ... that's our cross to bear and we gladly bear it and just keep writing and playing live and trying to get better and hope that we can get past that some day."

What the brothers think will help are the Can't Complain songs themselves -- the majority of which were written by Kevin. They are straight-forward, working-class, country-rock tracks that aren't cloaked in too much unnecessary metaphor or allegory.

It's music they feel is fairly universal.

"I think people really do relate to the lyrics," says Michael, an Emmy-winning documentary soundtrack writer.

"I know they relate to Kevin's celebrity, but I think we've made a lot of inroads."

"The thing I think connects the songs is that we don't sit down to write pop songs," Kevin says. "We don't sit down to write hit songs, because we're just not that good at it. We write songs for us to sing and for us to play.

"They're Bacon Brothers songs and they're almost entirely based on some kind of personal experience and completely from the heart ..."

That makes one wonder what was going on in the brothers' lives while writing the album's material. Most of the tracks seem to contain a lot of uncertainty and negativity, especially Kevin's songs such as Paris and Mother Fear, which contains the lines: "And as you watch your house come tumbling down/She stands beside you in the rubble/She'll be the first to recognize the sound/Of the bursting of the bubble."

"A lot of the record was written when I was ... on location in California making Hollow Man, which was a very, very long shoot," Kevin says. "A lot of stuff went wrong -- Elisabeth Shue got pretty badly injured halfway through the movie and we had to shut down.

"My father came out to visit on my birthday and he's 91 and he was reading a book to my kids and slipped off the back of a bed and broke his neck. He ended up in the hospital for a few months ...

"It was sort of a rough time for a lot of reasons and I suppose some of the songs were born out of that."

"Songwriting is sort of a cathartic thing," Michael says, "and I think you do respond more to uncertainties and things that happened badly rather than things that happened good."

"Our motto is: 'If something goes wrong, write a song,' " Kevin quips.

Opposed to his work onscreen, Kevin seems to enjoy the different experience of putting himself on the line in song and accepting the consequences for doing so -- frightening as they sometimes are.

"It is definitely the most scary thing," Kevin says.

"Certainly acting is difficult and can be emotionally very vulnerable and it's not all fun and games.

"But standing up in front of people and saying, 'Here's my little song, and I wrote this when I was sad, and here's my guitar and now I'm going to sing it for you,' it really is terrifying.

"In the back of your mind you're thinking, 'When will the tomatoes start flying?' "

And have they?

"No, but there have been some bras and panties," Kevin laughs.