Great White's heyday was more than a decade ago, but the hard rock outfit continued to plug away in clubs as it approached its 20th anniversary.
The band was part of a fertile southern California hard rock scene in the late 1980s. Its best-known song, "Once Bitten, Twice Shy," was nominated for a Grammy Award for best hard rock performance in 1990.
Formed in 1984 behind lead singer Jack Russell, Great White favored a blues-rock sound and shunned the glam-rock scene that saw other bands sport makeup and wildly styled hair.
The Great White album "... Twice Shy" went double platinum, and the band toured on the high-profile Monsters of Rock tour with Kiss and Iron Maiden. The band's 1991 album "Hooked" went gold, but its days in the limelight were numbered by then.
"Face the Day," "Rock Me" and "Save Your Love" were some of the band's most popular numbers.
"I'm not trying to be some innovative lyricist writing about things that nobody's ever heard about before," Russell said. "Sometimes I think that people try to be too hip lyrically, where they go beyond what other people can understand. ... The songs that have always been memorable to me were the ones that were simple and basic, that remind me of a situation in my life."
The grunge rock scene of the early 1990s swept bands like Great White aside, and the band shifted from label to label trying to make a dent. But such groups can make a lucrative career as a touring outfit.
Lately, Great White has been recording for Portrait Records, a label that specializes in veteran hard rock acts like Ratt, Damn Yankees and Cinderella.
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