HERE'S AN ARTICLE THAT WAS IN THE NEW DETROIT FREE PRESS MAGAZINE "PLAY" ON THURSDAY:
Twinkle, twinkle punkish moms - April 26, 2007 - BY MARTIN F. KOHN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Electric guitarist Paula Messner likes to say that the Candy Band's audience is anyone from zero to 99, but "the moshers are 2 to 10. Diapers and sippy cups are flying."
Around 2 p.m. Sunday, then, diapers and sippy cups should abound at the Farmington Hills Festival of the Arts. That's when the Candy Band headlines the live entertainment at the event, which will also include demonstrating artists, hands-on activities and other family fun.
Known for taking nursery rhymes and old songs like "I've Been Working on the Railroad" or "Skip to My Lou" and making them punk rock tunes, the Candy Band consists of four moms from Royal Oak and Pleasant Ridge: Messner, Daniella Burckhardt (vocals), Anita Kelly (bass guitar), and Tammy Ristau (drums).
Since first getting together in 2003, they've made four CDs, played Lollapalooza (they've been invited back this summer), NBC's "Today" and lots of local gigs.
Messner, 43, was the instigator. A rocker to the core, she played in a couple of notable Detroit bands, the Motor Dolls and the Vertical Pillows. Then came motherhood. "I couldn't do that bar thing anymore," she says. But she loved rock 'n' roll, had loved it since she was a kid.
She figured a new generation of kids would, too, but there's no way you're going to get up in front of little kids and sing "I Wannna Be Sedated." But you could take that drive and energy and apply it to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
But what to do for a band? "All of my musician friends work day jobs" so they were unavailable. So Messner, who was teaching aerobics at the Clawson YWCA, rounded up some friends she'd made there. "None of these girls ever played before. I wanted it to be raw. What better way than finding people who didn't know how to play?"
She can't use that excuse anymore, Messner says. The band, whose repertoire now includes original songs, sounds pretty accomplished.
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