‘Mountains to Sea’ Compilation to Benefit Greensboro’s Flat Iron

North Carolina music webzine Blank Tapes released its second annual collection of tunes on Bandcamp on June 16. The 70-song compilation, called Mountains to Sea Vol. 2, features work from artists hailing from the sandy shores of Kill Devil Hills to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Hendersonville and everywhere in between. 

The ambitious project aims to raise proceeds for Flat Iron, an anchor of Greensboro’s downtown music scene since 2019. The venue put out a financial distress call via social media in May.

“Things are looking pretty bleak for the Flat Iron,” the post read. “We have taken quite a few hits over the last several months—a combination of things that are really tough to bounce back from when you’re already scraping by. Without going into too much detail, we really need your support.” 

Music journalist Jackson Balling had launched his Durham-based Blank Tapes venture in 2024 to interview and write about national bands and touring acts but didn’t get much traction at first. A shift in 2025 to focus primarily on North Carolina music and musicians saw the digital publication’s web traffic more than double. 

To celebrate the webzine’s one-year anniversary, Balling put out Mountains to Sea Vol. 1, a fundraising compilation featuring 20 songs from Tar Heel musicians in 2025. Including the physical cassette release, the collection raised more than $1,000 for the Community Foundation of Western NC, which aided western North Carolina’s recovery in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastation. 

In May 2026, Balling had begun doing the groundwork for a follow-up compilation celebrating Blank Tapes’ second anniversary when he learned about the dilemma facing Flat Iron and its owners Josh King and Abbey Spoon.

“I opened up Instagram, and that was the first thing I saw,” Balling says. He decided to fast track Mountains to Sea Vol. 2, including a commemorative art print by Kill Devil Hills band Cor de Lux’s Dawn Moraga with the compilation’s Bandcamp release.

When Balling put the call out for artists to contribute to the musical collection, the response was overwhelming.

“There wasn’t a day where we didn’t have a submission come in,” he says. “The representation, [and] the reach of how many people really value that venue, I think was the biggest takeaway for me.”

One of the musicians who responded to the call was Kings Mountain singer-songwriter Kim Ware. 

“I saw a post that Blank Tapes put out, and coincidentally, just a couple of weeks before, I had played at Flat Iron … with my friend, [Carrboro electronic ambient artist] Jphono1,” Ware says. “It’s such a great venue and the staff could not have been nicer to us. When I saw what was going on with them, I definitely wanted to be involved.”

Ware began her musical career as a drummer and currently occupies the drum stool for Shelby’s humorous, hard-rocking foursome Y’ALL’RE, but for 16 years she forged a career in Atlanta as a plaintive and haunting indie-folk guitarist and singer. 

Read more: Shelby Punks Y’ALL’RE Do It for the Love of Music (2025)

Currently living on her family’s farm in King’s Mountain, Ware releases her self-penned music as Kim Ware and the Good Graces, a rotating band of players that takes its name from her late, beloved grandmother Grace. 

Ware’s contribution to Mountains to Sea Vol. 2, a song called “Old/New,” is jaunty, jangly and forthright, occupying a midpoint between her earlier introspective folk rock and the full-barreled attack of Y’ALL’RE. 

“I was thinking about relationships changing and wanting things to be just like they used to be, but then that’s often not possible,” says Ware of her inspiration for her tune.

The other Charlotte-area band contributing to Mountains to Sea Vol. 2 is alternative emo foursome Leaving for Arizona. Unlike Ware, the band has not played the Flat Iron, but the members still feel a connection to the venue.

“It clicked with me because I’ve been booking shows for the band,” guitarist Jonathan Avilés says. “It’s hard to find places that can accommodate smaller artists and to see that their scene could be losing another venue. We felt like we should contribute in any way that we could.”  

Leaving for Arizona is also a Blank Tapes repeater, having contributed a track to the webzine’s previous fundraising compilation.

“We wanted to be a part of Volume 1 because my girlfriend Olivia [Housley] has family that was personally affected by Hurricane Helene,” says Leaving for Arizona drummer Aubrey Hollopeter. “They live in Burnsville [and] the area was pretty devastated, so that really meant a lot to us personally to help out with that.”

For Volume 2, Leaving for Arizona contributes “Pookie Buster,” an energetic start-stop punk-pop raver featuring Housley on trumpet. 

Balling says there are even a few out-of-state musicians contributing tunes to Mountains to Sea Vol. 2. One of them is Phoenix, Arizona-based singer-songwriter Matt Alexander. 

In 2006, Alexander launched and fronted Matt Irie Band, an eclectic reggae, hip-hop, funk and alt-rock combo from Greensboro that played Charlotte venues including Jeff’s Bucket Shop, Tremont Music Hall, Amos’ Southend, Visulite Theatre, Evening Muse, and Neighborhood Theatre. 

After moving to the Copper State in 2018 and taking a hiatus from playing and performing in 2020, Alexander returned to making music under his own name in 2022.

“Being from Greensboro, I saw the news about the Flat Iron, that they were having trouble, and I said, ‘What can I do to help contribute back to the town that helped shape me?’” Alexander says.

Balling points to Alexander’s charging, swinging and jazzy “Better Off (She Said)” to illustrate the Blank Tapes compilation’s broad musical breadth. The track, a reimagining of an old Matt Irie Band tune, boasts the mixing skills of Grammy-winner Zach Allen.

“[Allen] brought years of craftsmanship to the mix and made the track 10 times cooler than I ever imagined,” Alexander says. “His résumé includes the likes of Keb’ Mo’, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, and G. Love. Getting to talk with him and absorb everything he had to offer was an honor.”

A GoFundMe launched by Greensboro musician Suzanne Stafford has raised $46,800 for Flat Iron at the time of this writing, surpassing the campaign’s initial goal of $30,000.

The release of Mountains to Sea Vol. 2 should help supplement those funds and boost the venerable venue into the second half of 2026, but just as important, Balling believes the response to Blank Tapes’ call for submissions shows how cooperative North Carolina’s music scenes can be.

Balling hopes Mountains to Sea Vol. 2, spanning the Tar Heel state and beyond, will illustrate that there is an extraordinary music community throughout North Carolina, not just in terms of talent but in their desire to show up for each other.

“I want this to be both an artist and musical showcase and a memento for Josh and Abbey of the Flat Iron to see a microcosm of their reach,” Balling says. “Musicians live or die by the quality of their music venues, and it’s clear that this year’s participants understood the threat of losing a top-notch space like the Flat Iron.”

Even artists who have never set foot in the venue feel that saving Flat iron is a win.

“I view everything kind of like how I view The Milestone,” Avilés says, referencing west Charlotte’s venerable and historic venue. “They were the first ones to give us a leg up to actually come and play at a venue.” 

A frequenter of the late, lamented Tremont Music Hall, Avilés recalls being devastated when that beloved Charlotte venue closed.

“You never know how close something can be to being lost,” he says.

WATCH: The Lost Tapes — One Last Show at Tremont Music Hall

With luck and continued support from musicians and music lovers, a valued North Carolina music venue will continue to keep its doors open, Balling’s Blank Tapes will press on in supporting the state’s musicians and music scenes, and artists like Leaving for Arizona will get a chance at last to play before a Flat Iron crowd after all.