Each of us has a clearly defined area of expertise. Walter and Darren each come up with great parts. Everyone has a say. The evidence, of course, is the music. Check out the lyrics, filled with their dazzling metaphors and images of flight, celestial bodies, desire and dawn and light.
Ascension captures that heat - and renders it with a more complex brilliance.
The fire comes from passion. They came together in 1996. Tompkins had put in four years as a journeyman rocker with Busbee in Hundred Year Sun, a band that had toured out of Tompkins' native Augusta. Sharing space in a musicians' crash pad, they pulled all-night writing sessions, Marc drawing on his rock 'n' roll roots and Rick sharing expertise gleaned from jazz gigging and work with Jellyfish alumni in Umajets. In 1998, Billionaire put out The Goodnight Sky, their own indie release.