As singer/guitarist and a key songwriter in Blink-182, Tom DeLonge was in one of the most popular bands in rock. During its 12-year run, the band sold more than 20 million CDs and stood alongside Green Day as the kings of pop-punk.

Now that Blink-182 is history and DeLonge is fronting his new band, Angels & Airwaves, it’s clear that he still has big ambitions – beginning with his belief that his new group could have even wider appeal than Blink.

While Angels & Airwaves begins the year with a headlining club and theater tour, DeLonge is hinting about a far bigger production this fall. He’s been vague on details, but the tour would play arenas and feature futuristic and revolutionary stage effects and production developed in collaboration with NASA.

While still based in pop, Angels & Airwaves offers a notable departure from the guitar-based sound of Blink-182. On the group’s recent second CD, “I Empire,” many songs feature synthesizers and electronics more than guitars, giving the music an expansive techno edge.

DeLonge said he wanted to explore a more epic kind of sound after leaving Blink. At the same time, he feels Angels & Airwaves still has elements of that band’s sound. He pointed to the group’s current single, “Everything’s Magic,” as an example.

“It sounds like a futuristic Blink song,” he said. “So we definitely still do that, too.”

DeLonge thought he would evolve his songwriting in Blink-182, collaborating with his bandmates, bassist/singer Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker. Instead, things quickly fell apart in that group.

In a 2006 interview, Hoppus said that in the final stages of Blink-182, DeLonge backed out of a planned 2005 United States tour and wanted to dictate when and how much the group would tour. Hoppus said De

Longe also wanted to change the way the band created songs, by working on his own and e-mailing in-progress tracks to Hoppus and Barker, rather than getting together in person.

DeLonge, not surprisingly, said Hoppus misinterpreted his intentions.

“The reality of the situation was that Travis and Mark were mad because I wanted to go home and be with my family,” DeLonge said. “They didn’t want that to happen, so they thought I was trying to control the band because I was saying ‘No matter what, I need to go and be a father to my kid. I just missed the first two years of her life.’

“So they said I was trying to control the band and tell them when to tour. So I said, ‘OK, if I’m going to go home to be with my kid, how about if I at least start doing some demos, so that way it’s at least not lost time.’ And then they said ‘Now you’re trying to record without us.’ I said ‘No, I’m just trying to be constructive when I’m at home.’ And they were just paranoid.”

DeLonge’s career intentions also became an issue after Hoppus and Barker were mistakenly copied on an e-mail from Geffen Records in which the label offered DeLonge a solo deal. DeLonge insists he would never have left Blink to go solo, but the memo only raised the level of mistrust, and in the end, the conflict split the band.

Hoppus and Barker went on to form a new band, +44, while DeLonge formed Angels & Airwaves with guitarist David Kennedy (who worked with DeLonge in their side project, Box Car Racer), former Offspring drummer Atom Willard and former Distillers bassist Ryan Sinn.

Angels & Airwaves released its debut CD, “We Don’t Need To Whisper,” in 2006 and scored a top-five modern rock single with “The Adventure.”

Now comes “I Empire,” which DeLonge said he sees as musically more diverse but not as atmospheric or ethereal as the first CD. Thematically, though, he views “I Empire” as a companion piece to the debut CD.

“There’s one distinct story, but there are two sides to it -- the beginning of knowing that there is a way to change yourself and the other part of the story is enacting that change,” he said.

The connections between the two CDs, DeLonge