Drawing threads from legend, current friendships and religion, the six songs on Michaela Tempers’ ‘Good Woman’ EP bridge contemporary and classic folk styles. Rich with meaning and coloured by excellent musicians, they creatively reflect life’s challenges, her sincerity leavened by wit and uniquely dynamic constructs. The Te Whanganui-a-Tara writer and musician talked with Richard Thorne.

Michaela Tempers recorded and independently released her first EP over a decade ago, then in her early 20s. She has since removed it from digital platforms, but admits still having some of the merch.

“I don’t think I was proud of it, or I didn’t think I was good enough… or maybe like, ‘Oh, this isn’t who I am anymore,’ and I just took it down. I looked back on it again more recently (when I was looking for some live repertoire), and it’s written by a 20 year-old, yeah, but some of it’s quite good actually!”

Her childhood music training included flute and piano, but it wasn’t until she was 16 that she took up guitar for the first time, after watching a video of Joan Baez covering Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe. She also taught herself to sing, her early music inspired predominantly by the folk of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Tempers’ 2025 sophomore EP ‘Good Woman’ still reflects the measured and direct folk influence of Baez, but more so more current female indie-folk artists, among whom Australian superstar Julia Jacklin is a good representative. Though considerably less narrative than either in her lyrical phrasing, her songs carry a similar pensive sincerity, richness of emotive detail, and worldly weight of message.

The songs for this new indie release came after a years-long period in which she had completely stopped playing, travelled widely living in “lots of crazy places”, then settled in Melbourne, before returning to Wellington with her husband in 2019. She subsequently completed an undergrad degree, followed by a master’s in Creative Writing at Victoria University, which coincided with the return of enthusiasm for music and songwriting.

Her self-compiled press release describes the six songs as exploring the complexities of womanhood – more in a sense of questioning how she should respond, or be. At the end of Nothing To Lose she sings, ‘…but now that I’m older, I say it like it is.’

“If I were to analyse the EP, I think it is about me coming to terms with who I am, my identity, like really accepting myself. That’s not purposely, but as I look back on the songs there’s a lot of doubt, and then empowerment, it sort of ebbs and flows in that regard.”

Though not necessarily tied, her songs frequently change tempo, with unexpected breaks and momentum shifts common, a style unusual in folk music. Laughing at the observation, Tempers explains that having taught herself guitar she doesn’t really know what she’s doing half the time, so maybe does things a little differently.

“Someone once said to me that you never know where a Michaela song is going to go! I play with a bunch of very established musicians who’ve gone through jazz school, and at rehearsals I sometimes feel a bit apologetic, like, ‘Sorry, my timing’s a bit shit’, or, ‘I know this part of the song’s a bit weird.’ But they all say, ‘No, it’s, great, don’t change it!’ I think I just like to make interesting sounds.”

If there is heartbreak at the root of any writing that bled into this EP it’s not of the romantic kind, rather creative and in the event, instructive.

“We’d moved back here, and I had an old hard drive of my music. I think I wanted to share a song with someone, or something else happened where I realised I had accidentally deleted the music. All of it was gone, like albums worth! Not saying that it was any good, but yeah, it all went.

“And it was like, I was broken… I had a breakdown. I’m trying to label the emotion, but I just felt an immense amount of pain and grief that was like, ‘Wow, this is quite strong. Is it warranted? I don’t know.’

“That just made me think, ‘I need to do this. Music is a huge part of me, why am I not playing music? So then I just decided, ‘Okay, I’m gonna pick the guitar back up.’”

Pōneke was still new to her then, but among the new friends she’d made was Brooke Singer, songwriter and producer of the internationally experienced folk band French For Rabbits. Handily also one of the team behind Wellington’s Home Alone Music, on which label her EP is released.

“I have a good musician friend who used to live here and now lives in New York. I messaged him, and was like, ‘Hey, I want a music friend’, and he put me in touch with Brooke. It just worked, and we’ve been friends ever since. Brooke is such a lovely person, just a very, very kind human.”

It took Tempers some time to tell her new friend that, alongside her academic studies, she is a musician – and admits still sometimes feeling like an imposter with music.

“I don’t know quite why, but it’s like, I’m not a jazz musician. I’m just a little folky sort of bedroom musician…

“And then I started to write music again, and as I started to build the songs these people all just banded around me! It’s been quite a slow process, to be honest, but it’s been really, really fulfilling.”

Singer became a knowledgeable guide, providing feedback in song development. Tempers also took guitar lessons with Chris Armour, who then joined her live band as lead guitarist, and played a major role in recording and mixing. The three shared in production of the EP tracks.

“I don’t know how to say this with sounding super lame, but I just really feel like I’ve reclaimed myself, and my identity. Because, yeah, there was just a lot of pain for me in not having done music for years, or just letting that side of me go.”

Recorded at The Surgery in early 2024 and released in November and December that year, Forest Fire and Good Woman were the first singles from the EP. The planned early 2025 EP release got pushed back when Tempers decided to add a couple more songs.

Forest Fire she describes as a folk-rock number written about the strange relationship between pain and happiness, that has a reflection in her hard drive tale.

“Sometimes life sweeps right through you, burning everything away, and it’s hard and painful, and then you walk out the other side, different. Better? I don’t know. I think that’s what I was trying to understand.”

Good Woman, which gives her EP its name, opens dramatically with the line, ‘He took her like a dagger to the eye’, the two simple verses closing with, ‘It’s hard to watch a good woman cry’.

“That’s quite a painful song, actually. In a nutshell someone very close to me was in an abusive relationship, so that’s what it’s about. And I think I draw parallels to that in terms of my own prism of growing up in an orthodox religious setting, and being told how to be – especially as a woman.

“I think they’re all part and parcel. If I dial it down, I think all these songs are somehow about breaking free.”

Nothing To Lose (which comes with a fantastic Kiwiana video – see below) and The Plane were the late additions, both tracks recorded at guitarist Chris Armour’s studio, and featuring the rest of Tempers’ genuine all-star band – Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa drumming, Phoebe Johnson playing bass, Dayle Jellyman on organ, and Brooke Singer providing other keyboards.

The Plane is the final track, and brings things back to a ‘60s contemplative simplicity – the acoustic guitar, aching voice and questioning lyric end of folk.

“It’s about this strange intersection between ambition, happiness and grief,” she explains. “I have a friend who’s suffering from an illness, which she possibly may not come back from, and that’s hard.

“Is writing music as important as a life? Not that you can conflate the two things, but it was also the sense that our lives just felt so different. And then it was me reflecting on how I’m really happy pursuing music. I find art very important, and a vehicle for change, and it’s obviously very meaningful.

“But I also struggle with my ambition, and like the self-promotion of myself as a musician when half the world is in wars. While the way that I’m living, working really hard and trying to do all this promo, and play, and be someone, feels so meaningful to me, it also feels in comparison so frivolous … and I always have that in the back of my brain.”