After years of creating hit songs and albums and taking home four Grammy Awards, Pat Benatar is still out on the road, sharing her music with fans in North America.

Benatar grew up in New York and started taking singing lessons as a child, following in the footsteps of her opera singer mother. She says that she sang in any choir she could get into, no matter the denomination, and eventually got involved with musical theater in high school.

By Benatar's high school years in the late '60s and early '70s, as rock was gaining footing on the east coast, her parents were trying to steer her toward a career as a professional musician, and schooling at Juilliard after graduation. As she was strictly kept away from the burgeoning live rock scene, and only allowed to attend symphonies, opera and theater, Benatar would sneak and listen to the Rolling Stones on her transistor radio. She eventually broke it to her family that classical music was not her path.

After a brief detour into Health Education at State University of New York at Stony Brook, Benatar (still going by her given name, Patricia Andrzejewski) dropped out of school and married Dennis Benatar, her high school sweetheart, who had been drafted into the Army.

In 1973, inspired by a Liza Minnelli concert, Benatar decided to pursue a career in music. After working at a number of clubs, Benatar took part in amateur night at the New York City comedy club, Catch a Rising Star. She caught the ear of

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club owner Rick Newman, who would become her manager, and was asked to return on a regular basis. An appearance at Tramps nightclub in 1978 got Benatar signed to Chrysalis Records, where she stayed until 1993.

By 1979, Benatar had recorded and released her debut album, “In the Heat of the Night.” The following year, she won the first of her four Grammy Awards for the album “Crimes of Passion,” which featured “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”--the song that would turn into Benatar's anthem throughout the years.

In 1982, Benatar married her guitar player and longtime partner, Neil Giraldo and they had their first daughter, Haley, in 1985. Benatar continued to work as a full-time touring and recording musician after Haley's birth, but decided to take a short break in 1994 with the birth of her and Giraldo's second daughter, Hana.

Throughout the '90s, Benatar released a couple of new albums of original material and returned to touring by 1995. The early 2000s saw the release of a tour DVD, “Summer Vacation Live,” and in 2003, Benatar released her first album of original material in five years, titled “Go.”

Benatar and her band, consisting of Giraldo on guitar, bassist Mick Mahan and drummer Myron Grombacher, will visit Eureka's Arkley Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday night, Sept. 13, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $71, available at www.arkleycenter.com, or by calling 442-1956.