Mojo Nixon, the unapologetically brash musician, actor, and radio DJ, died of "a cardiac event" on Wednesday, Feb. 7, his family confirmed to Rolling Stone. He was 66. Nixon was aboard the Outlaw Country Cruise, an annual music cruise where he was a co-host and regular performer.

Nixon enjoyed a supremely weird yet singular career after he and his former partner, Skid Roper, scored a bizarro breakthrough in 1987 with their novelty hit "Elvis Is Everywhere." A deranged bit of cowpunk/rockabilliy pastiche that honored (and lightly skewered) the King of Rock and Roll's diehard fans, "Elvis Is Everywhere" and its charming low-budget video became an unexpected MTV staple.

After splitting with Roper, Nixon set out to record his 1990 solo debut, Otis, linking up with Country Dick Montana and X's John Doe. His ambitions were big, as he told Rolling Stone: "I wanted to have a band and I wanted to compete with the Replacements and the Blasters and Los Lobos."

The album garnered good attention and the song "Don Henley Must Die" reached Number 20 on the Modern Rock Charts. (The famously prickly Henley even seemed to like it, performing it live with Nixon in 1992). But Otis' momentum was curtailed after Nixon's label, Enigma Records, went bankrupt.

Nixon stayed busy with a variety of music projects during the Nineties, while also branching into other realms. His first acting role was the 1989 Jerry Lee Lewis biopic, Great Balls of Fire, in which he played drummer James Van Eaton; his other acting credits included the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. movie and the comedy Car 54, Where Are You?. He later picked up gigs as a radio DJ in Cincinnati and San Diego, before securing his longstanding spot on SiriusXM in the early 2000s.