The Mixtape

The poet's job description is "keep your eyes open, your heart alert and allow a little bit of serendipity in," David Merritt says.

Our guest on the Mixtape is Kiwi actor, comedian, writer and director Jesse Griffin. Jesse is the co-creator of Educators, as well as starring in Nude Tuesday, 7 Days, 800 Days. Many will be familiar with his American country music character Wilson Dixon which UK magazine Time Out credits as delivering "some of the funniest songs you'll ever hear". Jesse is bringing Wilson Dixon back for the The Comedy Festival Winter Specials.

Our guest picking the music over the next hour is designer Kristine Crabb, the fashion artist who dresses NZ' s most boundary pushing musicians... names like Lorde, Aldous Harding, Erny Belle, and Taite Prize winner Vera Ellen. Kristine started her 20 year career in fashion with the boutique shop Rip Shit and Bust in 2001 and then went on to create Miss Crabb, a label which earned her a cult following that she has carried over to her new project Gloria - named after the rebellious spirit of her grandmother.

Our guest picking the music is Kiran Dass, one of New Zealand's most trusted book reviewers and director of WORD Christchurch.

Selecting the songs is veteran broadcaster Grant Walker. He has worked across the spectrum in radio as a breakfast host and newsreader, through to television. Where many will know him as narrator of the popular local TV show Sale of the Century. He also knows the ins and outs of RNZ National's programming, as a presenter, lead scheduler and voice trainer for many years and left the role recently to take up a new opportunity in journalism as NBR's first Editor in Chief of Strategy.

Our guest picking the music is actor, writer and director Chelsie Preston Crayford. Chelsie's acting projects have been vast and numerous including Eagle vs Shark, Savage, The Panthers, Netflix's global hit The Royal Treatment, Nude Tuesday, and winning a Logie for her role in Underbelly and an AACTA for The Code. Most recently she starred in crime thriller Dark City: The Cleaner, and has just wrapped a new show called A Remarkable Place to Die - a New Zealand set detective series. Chelsie has written and directed her own short films and has just been funded to make a feature film that celebrates her upbringing in a household of three generations of women.

Colin Hogg can't live without music - lately a bit of Bill Evans and Claude Debussy - but doesn't like being told what to listen to. The veteran music journalist and writer selects five of his favourite tracks for The Mixtape.

Our guest picking the music is rurally-based, internationally-touring DJ Lord Echo. Lord Echo is the artist name for Michael August who you might know as Mike Fabulous. He's a multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ and has been a part of the New Zealand music scene since the late 90s, playing bass for The Black Seeds for 15 years and performing with Fly My Pretties for many more. Lord Echo has just returned to Aotearoa after a stint of shows in Japan, and playing support for Jungle at their massive Spark Arena show.

Our guest selecting the songs is Romesh Dissanayake, a Sri Lankan and Kor-yo Saram writer, poet and chef from Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. His award winning debut novel "When I open the shop" is an ode to the city of Wellington and gives us fresh voices, often under-represented in NZ literature. He speaks to Maggie Tweedie about how music and food etch into his words on the page and continue to be a source of inspiration for him creatively.

Our guest picking the music over the next hour is Dujon Cullingford, a DJ and record collector based in Ngaruawahia. Dujon is a champion for underground New Zealand funk, soul and disco from back in the day. He is also the champion of breakdance - working hard to make it an Olympic sport. For the third year running, Dujon shares his musical taonga with Music 101.

Musician Paul Kean from The Bats is picking the tunes on the Mixtape this week. Paul has been a member of several bands, The Basket Cases, Toy Love, The Bats, Minisnap, and more recently a musical project called The Sundae Painters. When Paul is not on the stage, for years he's worked behind the scenes for Canterbury University and Christchurch City Council in event production, music production and tour management. Paul is a big supporter of the Arts, recently curating an exhibition celebrating the art of Hamish Kilgour at the Christchurch Arts Centre.

This special NZ Music Month Mixtape celebrates the hero guitars played by some of our most legendary musicians. Country singer/songwriter Glen Moffatt wrote a definitive list of the ten hero guitars of NZ music on Audioculture. Of course once that list was published there was an outcry about which guitars had been left off the list.....so he's just published another one. Born in Napier, Glen became a well known performer in the clubs, town halls, theatres, and festivals of New Zealand before moving to Brisbane. He's now a music historian at Audioculture, sharing his knowledge and appreciation for Kiwi music.

This week on the RNZ Mixtape we go mushroom foraging with Liv Sisson. Liv is a forager, fungi enthusiast and writer at the Spinoff. On the Mixtape she shares the local music and mushroom discoveries she's made since moving to New Zealand.

This year's Taite Music Prize winning singer/songwriter Vera Ellen and her producer Ben Lemi pick the New Zealand music that influenced them and talk about the special artist/producer relationship behind Vera's latest album Ideal Home Noise.

Mike Howie shares some of his favourite music with Charlotte Ryan.