Nick Oliveri

Nick Oliveri pouring his heart out, coffeehouse-style, on acoustic guitar? What’s next, Lemmy Kilmister’s harpsichord tour? The gaunt, goateed Oliveri, with roots traceable to the Southern California desert-rock band Kyuss, has led a desultory and never-tame life in music. He first caterwauled his way onto a national stage as the oft-naked bassist, screamer and secondary songwriter for Queens of the Stone Age, but Josh Homme fired him in 2004 for his allegedly unprofessional lifestyle choices. Oliveri found more accepting brethren in the sexually explicit, drug-lovin’ Dwarves, with whom he has played bass under the alias Rex Everything. With members of his current band, Mondo Generator, on paternity leave, Oliveri apparently decided it was time to get in touch with his inner John Denver. His latest solo release, Death Acoustic, features Oliveri unplugged on covers and songs by his previous bands, but his acidic wail, on such tracks as the Dwarves’ raunchy “Dairy Queen” and G.G. Allin’s raunchier “Outlaw Scumfuc,” still displays a man blithely in touch with his demons.