Swimming with sharks: Great White ready to bring the rock hits to Isleta Resort & Casino

Feb. 7—More than 40 years into his career, Michael Lardie finds himself growing as a musician.

He will practice daily and looks forward to hitting the road.

"It's an interesting world for us now," Lardie says. "We don't travel by bus anymore. Everything we do is by plane. We're on the planes so much, it's important to get those naps in."

Lardie is a member of the rock band Great White. The band is set to perform at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10, at Isleta Resort & Casino. The band is touring with fellow 1980s rock band, Slaughter.

The band found mainstream success during the 1980s when the genre was popular.

Lardie says the band never stopped writing.

More than 45 years in and Great White enlisted Brett Carlisle to take over vocal duties and lead the charge on hit after hit.

"I was talking to Brett (Carlisle) the other day and we agreed that I needed to go out to his house and show him the new songs," Lardie says. "Writing is one part of what we do. We're motivated to get a new album out. We're going to take the pieces that we have and put them together to create something great. It's been six years since the last one."

That arsenal of songs include the Grammy-nominated Best Hard Rock Performance hit, "Once Bitten, Twice Shy," as well as "Rock Me," "Mista Bone," "Save Your Love," "House of Broken Love" and "Lady Red Light."

The band has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide, has six Top 100 Billboard hits, nine Top 200 Billboard albums, two platinum albums, and clocked the top of MTV four times.

It has also released 13 albums to date.

The band is made up of Lardie, Carlisle, Mark Kendall, Audie Desbrow and Scott Snyder.

Since 1982, the Great White sound has captivated audiences worldwide with crushing, blues-based guitar riffs and swagger that invokes an emotional high for anyone that listens. The band's core writing team of Lardie and Kendall forged numerous hits over the years, and when Desbrow joined in '85, the grooves hooked an amazing stride.

Lardie says the band used to do records and then go out on tour to support them but the process has somewhat changed.

"What's great is that our fanbase is such that we can count on them," he says. "They are still buying physical mediums of music. They are downloading and streaming it. We have that itch to have some new music and we're ready to give it a go."

Lardie says one of the greatest compliments for the band is to see generations of fans in the audience.

After decades of performing, Lardie's love for being on stage is different.

"The love I have for being on stage is even deeper and more profound at this point," he says. "One of the reasons is that venues are still selling out. There's an appreciation that grows with the maturity of being an artist and I really cherish the time we get to be on stage. Now we do about 50 to 60 shows a year and that's a good place for us."