Staind singer Aaron Lewis back in Vegas

Staind is a rock band that's been around enough years to do the full-circle thing where they don't give their new album a separate title.

But Las Vegas seems to see a lot more of frontman Aaron Lewis on his own. Casinos have become "the skeletal system for touring," Lewis noted a few years back, and he visits them with an acoustic guitar in hand, keeping it simple in a parallel career.

Before the hard-rock outfit Staind hit in 1996, Lewis "used to be the guy sitting over in the corner of your favorite bar on a Wednesday night. I was playing music pretty much five nights a week (and) had to deal with people making requests all night long and had to have ammunition to throw back at them."

"Somebody will yell one out, and for some reason my mind will click on it and go, 'Oh, you can play that song.' I'll get a verse into the song and completely crash and burn because I forget the words to the next verse."

At home he uses stronger ammunition than a bevy of cover tunes.

Lewis is becoming something of a celebrity hunter, and told the Review-Journal last year that he eats everything he shoots.

"Just because I'm a hunter -- and that's part of me, and I kind of live for it -- that doesn't mean I'm all about killing things senselessly," he said.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.