By Anita Stewart, Managing Editor (Retired)
August 20, 2026
Detroit doesn’t simply produce rock musicians—it produces survivors, artists who carry the grit, humor and beautiful defiance of the Motor City wherever they go. Paula Messner is one of them. From her early days in Detroit punk with the Vertical Pillows, through the raw-edged Motor Dolls, to the wonderfully subversive idea of turning children’s songs into punk rock with The Candy Band, Messner has spent decades refusing to fit neatly into anybody’s definition of what a woman, a mother—or a rocker—is supposed to be. She has shared that Detroit DNA of loud guitars, irreverence and reinvention across generations, and she’s still creating, performing and making people laugh, sometimes even doing comedy gigs.
I caught up with Paula to talk about those early Detroit punk days, the road she traveled afterward, and what it means to still be standing, still playing, and still raising a little hell. Unfortunately the audio of our conversation has been lost due to a technical glitch…but here is what we talked about–and what a fun interview it was!
Detroit has never been particularly good at producing quiet musicians. The city that gave the world the MC5, Iggy Pop, Kid Rock, Eminem, the White Stripes, Grand Funk Railroad, Ted Nugent, all of the Motown artists and generations of gloriously loud garage bands has always had room for artists who would rather make some noise than behave themselves. But she listens to other genres too. One particular favorite of hers is Motown royalty: Stevie Wonder.
Messner spent years earning her street creds in Detroit’s underground rock scene. Messner emerged in the 1980’s with the Vertical Pillows and carried that Motor City attitude into the 1990’s with the Motor Dolls, where she handled guitar and vocals. The Motor Dolls were an all-female Detroit trio whose music was loud, raw and unapologetically rooted in garage rock and punk; Messner’s rough-edged voice and guitar were central to the sound. The band released All Fired Up! and Burning Memories, and contemporary Detroit-area coverage remembered Messner as a formidable frontwoman. Just as important to her memories of that period was the scene itself.
A 1997 review of Burning Memories compared the force of her voice to an “atomic meltdown” and “machine gun fire,” while connecting the band’s Motor City lineage directly to the MC5 and New York Dolls—and even noting an endorsement from Iggy Pop. Yet when Messner later remembered those years, what stood out wasn’t simply the volume or attitude. “It was a great time,” she recalled. “The camaraderie was amazing between bands then. Everybody supported each other.”
But then her musical story took a wonderfully unexpected turn when punk rock collided with motherhood.
From Detroit Punk to the Candy Band
In 2003, Messner helped create The Candy Band sometimes called The Candy Bandits, a group of Detroit-area mothers who took familiar children’s songs and gave them the kind of treatment normally reserved for a sweaty punk club: electric guitars, aggressive rhythms, very fun and catchy lyrics and plenty of attitude. It was an idea that sounded slightly ridiculous—which was precisely why it worked.
Instead of abandoning rock and roll when motherhood arrived, Messner found a way to bring the two worlds together. The Candy Band transformed songs children already knew into music their rock-and-roll parents could actually enjoy. At the time, there seemed to be a real sparse market for kid’s music. We mentioned Canadian artist, Raffi and his song “Baby Beluga” but at the time, there was not much else. So Paula and the Candy Band changed all that and got national recognition for it and the idea traveled far beyond Detroit. The Candy Band performed at festivals, schools and children’s events, appeared on Pancake Mountain, and even played Kidzapalooza at Lollapalooza. NPR captured Messner performing a punk version of “The Wheels on the Bus” during a 2005 taping of Pancake Mountain in Washington, D.C.
Women Who Refused to Stop Playing
There was something more significant happening underneath the novelty. Messner and her bandmates were challenging an old assumption about women in rock: that eventually you were supposed to grow up, become a mother and put the guitar away. But Messner didn’t put hers away. She once described herself publicly as the “anti-June Cleaver,” explaining that part of the motivation behind The Candy Band was rebelling against the image of the perfect homemaker while using her love of rock and roll to make music children and parents could enjoy.
Detroit Is Still in There
Talking with Messner also means talking about Detroit. The city’s musical history isn’t simply something preserved in documentaries and record collections. It survives through musicians who played the clubs, knew one another, formed bands, broke them up, formed different bands and kept going.
Those memories are especially valuable now because they describe something the Internet can never quite recreate: a local music scene—people physically showing up for one another’s bands and creating something collectively. It was a distinctly Detroit apprenticeship—gritty, communal and fiercely independent—that would follow Messner into everything she did afterward. And now, wherever one finds music, “in real life” the artists seem to be doing what they can to show up and support one another.
And Paula Messner Still Isn’t Behaving
Perhaps the best ending to the Paula Messner story is that there really isn’t an ending. She is still performing and writing, now bringing humor directly into the equation with Miss Paula and the Candy Bandits. And with funny episodes of the Chatty Patty Paula Walla Talk Talk Show on YouTube and songs such as “Girls Weekend” and “Lunch Lady” have found a new audience online, while Messner has also begun appearing in comedy settings.
And can Paula write a song? WOW! Her process is with words, a whole page of them. Then rhyming them. Then the riffs and onward to the whole song. For her it’s easy. Her dream job if she was younger would be as a jingle songwriter. But she has no regrets with how her life has turned out so far. And she’s still songwriting and gets great joy from it.
Punk rocker. Guitarist. Mother. Children’s entertainer. Songwriter. Comedian. Is there anything she can’t do? Those descriptions sound like they belong to several different people. In Paula Messner’s case, they’re chapters of the same story. Paula is still enjoying her life as a mother, supporting her two daughters (as of this writing, one is getting married soon to a jazz musician) and the other is a film-maker.
And she wants to be in a band again. Getting itchy fingers. She plays on her front porch in her hometown because she wants to play. She has grown a huge audience on TikTok and Instagram who are amazed at her guitar skills and drive by her house to listen and wave; the younger generations might not know who originally wrote some of the covers she plays and that’s OK. She teaches music too. As she wants to keep doing that marvelous thing she loves. Lately she has been busking at Eastern Market, simply because she can–and she never wants to stop. Maybe that persistence is the most Detroit thing about her.
SOCIAL MEDIA
- Paula Messner, Detroit’s Punk Rock Lady Is Gonna’ Keep Playing - August 21, 2026
- A History of Peace Music and Anthems of Resistance–2011 to Present–Part 8 - August 14, 2026
- A History of Peace Music and Anthems of Resistance–2000 to 2010–Part 7 - August 1, 2026
