Billionaire

Marc Tompkins – vocals, guitar
Rick Beato – guitars
Walter Busbee – bass
Darren Dodd – drums, percussion

As power chords surge, Marc Tompkins sings, “I’m following the sound I can hear it coming down The universe is still within our reach.” The song is “Universe,” just one of the 13 stellar cuts off Billionaire’s major-label debut, Ascension – and the sound and sentiment are bold, aspirational, dramatic. “Anthemic, joyful, overwhelming” are the singer/guitarist’s own words for the music of this fast-emerging Atlanta quartet, a rock and power pop force to watch for.

Transcending trends, the group aims for a timeless energy that both echoes the classic rock that informs their songwriting and also fuels their up-to-the-minute immediacy, a fresh vitality rare among bands working today. Rock means something to Billionaire adds guitarist Rick Beato, Tompkins’ songwriting cohort: “It’s a matter of driving rhythm and intensity. It’s stark power, streamlined and direct.”

An apt description of Billionaire themselves. With bassist Walter Busbee and drummer Darren Dodd propelling the guitar-driven material forward, Tompkins/ Beato’s compositions grab attention instantly, and then linger with the listener. They’re a product of an unusual synergy. Combining instinct and intellect, the writers are collaborators with very distinctive strengths. “Marc has an amazing gift of spontaneity,” Beato says of the singer/lyricist. “Just beginning with free-associating, he then builds to conveying moods and ideas.” Of Rick, Tompkins comments, “He’s great with chord structure, adding slight dissonance, always coming up with the unexpected.”

Teaming up initially on acoustic guitars, Marc and Rick craft songs with extreme attention both to feeling and technique. For Tompkins, the process is about “vibe, conviction and communication.” Beato refines the fire. With his Masters degree from the New England Conservatory, he brings his knowledge not only of pop, but of “twentieth century classical composers and years of playing jazz standards” to bear on the task at hand. Then, says Beato, they turn the songs loose on the band. “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. From the sheer sonic gorgeousness of the first single “Touching Down” (“I have found paradise in your beautiful eyes”) to the unadulterated surge of “Rollercoaster,” “Never Get Enough” and “The Jesus Train,” Ascension communicates with a kind of cinematic scope; this is big music – it soars. Veteran producer Chris Kimsey (the Rolling Stones, Bad Company, Peter Frampton) illustrates that sound with bold yet subtle strokes. Check out the lyrics, filled with their dazzling metaphors and images of flight, celestial bodies, desire and dawn and light. Feel the momentum of the playing; there’s a kind of desperate inspiration here. On stage, with their Marshall stacks and monster drum kit, Billionaire go for broke (“Sometimes,” Marc says, “it feels like I’m the pilot of a plane up there”). Ascension captures that heat – and renders it with a more complex brilliance.

The fire comes from passion. “I don’t think we ever really got over it,” Tompkins says of each member’s early love for rock of the most ambitious stripe – The Who, AC/DC, the Beatles, The Kinks, Queen. They share an unabashed love for ’70s stadium shakers: “When Rick and I met, we talked about loving Boston or early Journey, and we were serious.” Add to the mix an insistence on melody – Burt Bacharach rates high with Billionaire – and Rick’s saturation in Miles and Coltrane, and you realize that the band’s influences are as diverse yet complementary as are its members’ personalities. One thing is certain: these musicians know music.

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. Moving to Atlanta, he hooked up with Dodd and Rochester, New York-native Beato – and Rick and Marc began writing almost instantly. 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. Very soon after, major-label ears paid heed. Roadwork then began, with the group hitting stages with The Cult and Tonic, and moving upward to headlining status.

Ascension serves notice of Billionaire’s arrival. Indelibly, it’s the band’s autobiography, so far. “With three out of four of us being Southerners, we do have that kind of identity,” Marc says, “but it’s more Southern Gothic. And we’ve all listened to a lot of English bands. I like to think that the English stole the blues, transformed it into ‘maximum R&B’ and then we heard what they were doing, and put a whole new twist on it – from our identity.”

Ascension, then, is personal music, but it’s more than that. Songs like “Jimmie Hale Mission,” based on a Birmingham, Alabama soup kitchen, or “Sunny Sunday Afternoon,” inspired by Marc and Rick’s front-porch musings, reflect real life experience, but it’s experience – of dreams and love and passion – that everyone can relate to. The album’s blazing intro “‘Til You’re High” sums up the Billionaire spirit of unlimited possibility: “Everything is for free You can take what you see You can see with your own two eyes.”

Visionary rock, then, is Billionaire’s promise. And, with Ascension, they deliver.