Weeks after Greensboro rallied to save The Flat Iron, a small but storied downtown music venue, a North Carolina music magazine is putting the proceeds of its compilation album toward the cause.
Blank Tapes, a digital magazine launched in 2024, has become a guide to bands and music from North Carolina and its surrounding states. Its site features interviews with local bands, showcases working bands across the state, and an annual compilation album, Mountains to Sea.
Proceeds from last year’s volume went to support Western North Carolina a year after Hurricane Helene devastated the area. This year’s volume, available June 16, will support the Flat Iron. The compilation features 70 tracks from musicians in North Carolina and surrounding states.
We caught up with Jackson Balling, founder of Blank Tapes, to talk about Mountains to Sea, and how his publication supports music and other causes in North Carolina.
The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
The Thread: What led you to start Blank Tapes?
I guess there’s kind of a foundation of me doing music journalism back when I was in college. Then I kind of got sucked into professional work and got away from it. But when I was laid off from my last job in July 2024, I was a little burnt out. I’m like, “Do I want to write anymore?” I decided, “Hey, let’s reach out to a buddy of mine who I played in a band with, who’s got a new band and working on an album, and let’s just do an interview for old times’ sake.”
It wasn’t really until, I would say late December of 2024, where I just kind of started reaching out to North Carolina-specific artists and being like, “All right, that’s my niche.” There hasn’t been a point where I felt that I didn’t have the drive or the desire to do it. It just kind of continues to be fun, and there’s so many talented musicians to talk to.
What are some of the ways Blank Tapes supports artists?
The first one that comes to mind is the artist directory that we have for North Carolina artists. There’s an artist who plays in a couple different bands, but her solo work is a project called Saturn Is Changing. She reached out to me to be like, “I also kind of started doing the same thing. Here’s mine, let’s combine.” Over a hundred artists came from that merging.
In February of last year, I started doing a monthly “New Music NC” column, and now it’s kind of not just North Carolina music. There’s some artists from Virginia or South Carolina that have reached out, and I’ll include them just because we’re all kind of in the same region.
It just shows how great the local music scene is. There’s so much music that gets lost just because there’s so much new stuff coming out and it’s hard to keep up with, especially if it’s local. Having that as a monthly column, it can be up to 40 plus releases that are in there.
How did the Mountains to Sea compilations come together?
It kind of got to be around four or five months into the project, I was having a lot of fun going to interview these bands and just being involved. So I’m like, “What’s a fun way to celebrate the first birthday? Let’s do something cool.”
A compilation has always been just one of those things I wanted to do. I kind of just put out the ask to people I chatted with, asking them to sing a song, and being a part of this first birthday for the website, but also the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene. I want it to really showcase local North Carolina musicians while also supporting something in North Carolina.
This year, we are very grateful to have a lot of community support, not just with sending in the songs, but also the cover art. All the artwork for this compilation came from a band, Cor de Lux, in the Outer Banks. We could turn this into a commemorative art print. That way there’s something physical that people can buy
In this case, it really shows the reach of not just Blank Tapes, but more importantly, The Flat Iron, and just how many people love that venue. So it’s been really awesome to see people come together, you know, meeting the moment, understanding the importance of not just The Flat Iron, but that venue in any city. I think there’s room to thrive, and it’s just awesome to be a part of the huge swelling of support that they have seen to get back up on their feet.
Are there any other initiatives you hope Blank Tapes can bring to the table in the future?
There’s a lot of smaller ideas that I’ve had in terms of educational opportunities. Is there interest from bands or musicians who want to hear from a nationally touring artist about how they tour? Or would anybody be interested in DIY music journalism or DIY show photography?
Another one is doing some sort of a mini tour that’s like Blank Tapes themed. I don’t know if it would be different bands every night, and it’s kind of like a showcase in different cities, or maybe having like co-headliners that are playing each show, but then you have different local acts. We’ll see where it goes.
