Lindsey Buckingham's last solo album was pre-empted by a big Fleetwood Mac tour, but he breaks it down to basics this weekend. Aaron Lewis started his solo acoustic concerts as a whim, but they have become a larger part of the Staind frontman's career.

Las Vegas casino entertainment isn't known for subtlety or minimalism. So what's with two stars in the same weekend stripping their shows down to acoustic guitar basics?

Chalk it up to coincidence or the truth beyond the perception of what can be found on the Strip during any given weekend. Casinos all over the country, Aaron Lewis notes, have become "the skeletal system for touring."

In fact, the Staind frontman is playing just casinos on his latest acoustic venture, a one-man show he brings to town for the fourth time Sunday at the Palms.

Lindsey Buckingham won't be alone, but will do sections of his "Under the Skin" album all by himself when a backing trio isn't lending a hand. Believe it or not, it's the Fleetwood Mac maestro's first solo album and tour since he played the Huntridge theater in April 1993.

FLEETWOOD MAC CAN WAIT

Lindsey Buckingham sounds very laid back on the phone, but says he's not the slacker a 13-year gap between solo releases might imply.

"There was more intent than it might have seemed to get a solo album out," he says with a chuckle.

Devout fans of Fleetwood Mac and its 58-year-old musical architect know the whole story. They may even have bootlegs of "Gift of Screws," a Buckingham album that was eventually shelved, with many of its songs raided instead for the 2003 Mac reunion "Say You Will."

"Sometimes you have to be responsive to the needs of the whole," he says. And considering the subsequent Fleetwood Mac tour twice visited the MGM Grand with a top ticket of $225, who could blame a guy?

But now, Buckingham's modest tour to promote "Under My Skin" stops at the Luxor today and Saturday, and he's hard at work on another new solo release for next year. This time, if Mick Fleetwood or the others come knocking, "I'm sort of letting them knock," he says. "I think I've sort of earned the time to be doing this for the next year or so."

It all worked out in the long run, Buckingham believes, because he also got remarried and had three children in the past 10 years. The acoustic and personal nature of the "Skin" album and "the musical shift it encompasses, is more authentic with what's going on with me right now."

The album mixes the confessional intimacy of the singer-songwriter genre with Buckingham's quirky, ornate production. "It was about keeping the number of instruments down, but it didn't stop me from jumping on the production values," he says. "That was part of the idea, to drive the atmosphere in an aggressive way" within a sparse instrumental environment.

He does that in large part by multitracking or otherwise processing his vocals. The result can be novel or distracting, depending on the listener's disposition.

"At this point in my career, if people want to speculate on my confidence or lack of confidence as a singer that's their prerogative. It just seems a little late for anyone to be thinking about that," he says. "It really was just more about trying to create a spatial (thing) and an etherealness.

"Without that, many of these things would have come across more just like hanging a mic in the room and letting somebody play. I didn't want to do that, either. I didn't want to be that literal about it."

Which way does he do it live? Buckingham wanted to save some surprises, but allows that "it's an interesting proposition to figure out how to present a show which would have resonance with what (the album) is... It's really very pared down. We tried to get as close as we could to the sounds on the new songs."

Three musicians join him at various times in various combinations, and at the end, "we just kind of rock out." Solo freedom or no, he acknowledges it would be "a mistake" to ignore the "Rumours"-era classics. "I think we would have riots."

KEEPING THINGS LOOSE

"I know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs," Aaron Lewis says.

Well, sort of.

Before his hard-rock outfit Staind hit big in 1996, he explains, "I 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."

Those are the deep roots of the one-man acoustic shows the 34-year-old Lewis first brought to the Golden Nugget two years ago and reprises Sunday at the Palms. But when it comes to most of those songs, Lewis is quick to admit, "I haven't played them in 15 years, and I haven't tried to play 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."

And that's part of the appeal. "The whole format of the solo show, when I'm playing somebody else's music, is quite loose," he says. "I know a lot of songs you wouldn't necessarily expect me to know, or to play, that's for sure. I'll bust into some Stephen Bishop, some Van Morrison or some Indigo Girls."

It all may be a new experience for those who came of age in the past 10 years, listening to the harder-rocking versions of Staind's teen-angst anthems such as "It's Been Awhile," "Epiphany" and "Everything Changes."

All of them are "songs I wrote on an acoustic guitar. When I play them in this format in this setting, I'm actually playing them the way they were written," Lewis notes. But even the more rocking Staind tunes -- "Falling," "Fill Me Up" -- are deconstructed in a way that "the energy is created from the delivery of the melody and the words. It's not created by being aggressive on the guitar.

"It's the first performance where there was nothing to get distracted by as far as the words." To have them heard so clearly is "kind of the ultimate for me."

And fans are listening. During an eight-night stand at Connecticut's Mohegan Sun during the holidays, "It was almost odd how quiet people were. They were so intently listening. You could hear, if somebody started talking, three people sitting in the general vicinity of them would freak out and tell them to stop talking."

Now that the acoustic shows have become more than just a lark, Lewis foresees a more distinct separation in his future work with Staind. "With this more mellow outlet available to me, I might be less apt to bring anything mellow to the table for Staind and let Staind go back to being the heavier band we started out as."