journey filipino guy

Arnel Pineda

Who Is Arnel Pineda?

After a series of unfortunate events in his childhood, Arnel Pineda found success in Asia as the front man for the group The Zoo. In 2007, he was discovered by Journey guitarist Neal Schon, after a series of YouTube videos were posted of him covering American songs, including the famous hit, "Dont Stop Believin'." In December 2007, Pineda became the new lead singer of Journey. His is noted for having a strikingly similar sound to former Journey front man Steve Perry.

Troubled Childhood

Arnel Pineda was born on September 5, 1967, in Sampaloc, Manila, in the Philippines. Throughout his childhood, Pineda endured grave misfortune. When he was just 13 years old, his mother, who was 35 at the time, passed away after a long battle with heart disease. Her medical costs left the family in serious debt, and Pineda's father could no longer provide for Pineda and his three younger brothers, Russmon, Roderick and Joselito.

While relatives were able to take in his brothers, Pineda was left on his own. He spent the next few years homeless, often sleeping outside in public parks and scraping for any food or water that he could afford. When possible, he would stay at a friend's house, who offered him a cot outside. Eventually, Pineda was forced to quit school and take up odd jobs collecting scrap metal and bottles at the pier and selling newspapers to support his family.

Early Career

Pineda's love of music started at a young age. He began singing at just five years old, and had entered many singing contests as a child. In 1982, when he was 15, Pineda was introduced to a local band called Ijos, and was encouraged by his friends to try out as their new lead singer. He sang the Beatles' "Help" and Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All." Although they were concerned with his lack of training, Ijos members were wowed by Pineda's powerful voice, and took him on as the new front man of the band. One of the band member's friends even offered to pay Pineda's salary, 35 pesos a night, out of his own pocket, and Pineda was offered a tiny room to sleep under the guitarist's front stairs.

In 1986, some members of Ijos joined together to form the new pop-rock band Amo. The group found success covering songs by hit groups Heart, Queen and Journey. In 1988, they turned heads when they won the Philippines' leg of the Yamaha World Band Explosion Contest. Although they were disqualified in the finals due to a technicality, the event was broadcast on TV in Asia, widening their fanbase. The band continued performing at popular clubs and arenas around the Philippines.

In 1990, the members re-grouped yet again, under the new name Intensity Five, and re-entered the contest. The band came in as runner up and Pineda won the Best Vocalist Award. After a series of unfortunate health problems in the early '90s, including the brief loss of his voice, Pineda re-emerged in 1999 with a new solo album with Warner Brothers. The self-titled album had several hits in Asia.

After brief stints with a few different bands, Pineda found success again in 2006 with The Zoo, a band that he formed with Monet Cajipe, a guitarist/songwriter who had been in all his bands during over the previous 20 years. The Zoo performed at several popular clubs in the area and, in 2007, released an album by MCA Universal titled Zoology . Soon the band began covering songs by groups such as Journey, Survivor, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles and more, with more than 200 performances uploaded to YouTube.

On June 28, 2007, Neal Schon, guitarist and member of the band Journey, saw a video of Pineda on YouTube and immediately contacted him. The band had been looking for a new lead singer, and Pineda's voice sounded strikingly similar to Steve Perry, Journey's legendary former front man. After speaking with Schon on the phone, Pineda made arrangements to fly to the United States and audition with the band in San Francisco. On December 5, 2007, Pineda was welcomed as the band's new lead singer.

Right away, Pineda went on tour with the band, performing two shows in Chile and two in Las Vegas. Both were a huge success. After a series of guest show appearances and magazine features, Pineda gained popularity within the American public. On June 3, 2008, the newly organized Journey released their first album, Revelation , which came in at No. 5 on the U.S. charts. The album was their highest charting album since Trial by Fire (with Steve Perry), and reached platinum status by October 2008.

Soon after the album's release, the band continued touring around the world with Pineda. The documentary, Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey , slated to be released in 2012, will chronicle the band's "Revelation Tour," and Pineda's first years with the band.

Personal Life

When he is not on tour, Pineda resides in the Philippines with his wife, Cherry, their children, Cherub and Thea. He has two other sons—Matthew, 19, and Angelo, 13—from past relationships.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Arnel Pineda
• Birth Year: 1967
• Birth date: September 5, 1967
• Birth City: Sampaloc, Manila
• Birth Country: Philippines
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Arnel Pineda is best known as the new lead singer for the rock group Journey.
• Astrological Sign: Virgo
• Nacionalities

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Arnel Pineda Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/arnel-pineda
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 20, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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The Surprising Story of Journey’s Filipino Frontman

Well, it’s actually not that surprising once you learn about musical culture in the philippines..

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Guys weaned on Led Zeppelin aren’t supposed to like Journey. Yet, decades beyond my rock ‘n roll formative years, I proudly stand in a crowd of Journey fans in Saratoga, New York, enamored with the band’s new Filipino lead singer, Arnel Pineda—the same singer who, a year prior, I watched perform cover tunes in dingy downtown Manila bars where wobbly ceiling fans swatted flying cockroaches. Having previously zigzagged across the Philippines in search of the keys to their native musical genius, I must admit I wasn’t surprised to witness Pineda’s rise to fame.

Arnel Pineda performing with The Zoo (before fronting Journey)

Photo by Bruce Northam

During my third trip through the Philippines, Southeast Asia’s only Christian country, I sought to answer the question: Why are the Philippines the rock-and-roll engine for the rest of Asia? From Hong Kong to Singapore and back up to Tokyo or Beijing , if there’s a skilled rock band on stage, they’re likely Filipino.

The Spanish colonial era that began in 1565 introduced guitars, choirs, and the art of serenading to the Philippines. This Eurasian hybrid—linked to the Renaissance—set the stage for a nation hooked on music. Historically, Filipinos have a song for every occasion, such as planting rice, fishing at night, and courting sweethearts. The Filipino serenade was inspired by the old-style Spanish romantic scenario: A guy shows up with his guitar outside his dream girl’s home and croons a love song. If she opens her window to listen and sings a song in response, he’s in; if the window doesn’t budge, it’s off to voice lessons or another gal’s house. Nearly every Filipino man I met born before 1960 had vivid recollections of serenading his eventual wife—or being shot down in flames.

Arreceffi Island, Philippines

My musical mission first led me to sand-and-ungle fringed Palawan, a narrow 250-mile-long island bisected by an imposing spine of limestone mountains. One of 7,017 Philippine islands, this is where I met Bing, a charming mother of five. She was serenaded at 2 a.m. by her eventual husband, who wasn’t put off by her underwhelming appearance at the window—her face at the time was encrusted with otherwise beautifying talcum powder. It was true love from the get-go.

Music wriggled its way into the Philippine heart long before the Spanish towed in stone cannonballs and religion. Palawan’s indigenous lowland Aboriginals, the Tagbanuas, expressed feelings of love in singing poems inspired by the inexhaustible variety of sounds in nature. They imitated the singing of insects and birds and created a bird scale that mimics musical notation. That birdlore vocabulary continues to bond men and women of the jungle.

In the 1980s, karaoke was invented by a Filipino man and then sold to a Japanese investor. It overtook the Philippines and modernized the serenade. Then, jukebox-style videoke began booming from street corners, bars, and malls. While American-style signs of affection play out as pricey gifts, horse-drawn carriage rides, and scoreboard proposals—most American men sing to their women only to humor them—Filipinos still sing to theirs as if their futures depend on it.

After Spain’s rule gave way to American colonization, the U.S. built schools in practically every village and taught the Filipino people English. Hollywood was also delivered to their doorstep. The Vietnam-era military bases needed entertaining, so Filipino rock, jazz, and lounge bands surfaced and thrived. Base towns became hubs for live Western music, which inspired many to pick up a guitar and sing. American soldiers also left behind a legacy of vintage guitars. Hundreds of collectors’ guitars—mostly Gibsons—found permanent homes in the Philippines. Turkey may have claimed the world’s “East Meets West” slogan, but it also justly describes the Philippines’s music scene.

Modern Manila, a mega-city of 15 million, is traditional yet faddish, Asian in character, but Western in disposition. Still hunting for the history behind the Filipino love of music, I was unaware that their irrepressible musicality was about to storm America until I caught wind that the iconic 1980’s rock band, Journey, had just auditioned a Filipino named Arnel Pineda as their new lead vocalist—and that same singer was fronting his Manila-based rock cover band, The Zoo, in a few hours. I sat in the front row and introduced myself to Arnel between sets. He sat with me and explained that Journey’s guitarist admired his covers of the band’s hits on YouTube and flew him to California. Only a few days after his tryout, it was supernatural to witness this still unknown would-be star rock out in a random, smoky Manila bar.

Arnel Pineda is not yet famous, but still happy.

While the decision to hire Arnel had still not been made, I interviewed him after two more Manila shows. His arena-rocking potential was obvious. A month later, Journey announced him as their new vocalist, as well as a world tour. A Filipino fronting a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-bound band was the biggest entertainment news ever in the Philippines, outshining Filipino Lea Salonga’s Tony Award-winning role in Miss Saigon .

Before Arnel was launched out of obscurity and into the world spotlight, the youthful, unassuming 40-year-old was armed only with standard Filipino politeness. He insisted that his birthplace was “a big sponge that’s open to world music.” No stranger to smiling, he added, “We grew up breathing music, it’s in our veins.”

Some may call it luck, but Arnel was well-prepared for this opportunity. His mother, a tailor who passed away when he was 13, began grooming him via in-home performances at age five. Born into poverty, he was competing in local singing competitions by age seven. He went pro at 15, initially showcasing his vocal range in malls and later throughout the Philippines and other parts of Asia. His story was also punctuated by spells of hunger and homelessness.

It seems almost everybody in the Philippines can carry a tune. Women sing to nobody in particular, as they stare into internet café computer screens; a man whistles as he stands before a urinal; cab drivers croon along with their radios; maids belt out while working; a teenaged boy strums a guitar on a street corner, practicing a puppy love song. Like Brazilians and the Irish, few Filipinos are performance shy, because music—from liturgical to metal—is bred into their souls. Although karaoke machines are displacing windowsill serenades, my faith was restored as my Philippine Airlines flight touched down in California, and two flight attendants seated in the jump seats facing me began singing to each other. Music celebrates a universal love, and there’s no greater invitation to love than singing about it.

When Arnel Pineda first toured the world with Journey, he invited me backstage in Saratoga Springs, NY, where he was about to dazzle 25,000 wildly cheering fans. After a hug and a handshake, we reflected on how things had changed for him since our smoky bar-room conversations in Manila. It was a fleeting moment to revel in his rags-to-riches story. It’s rare to successfully replace the lead singer of an iconic band. Van Halen and AC/DC pulled it off, as did Journey. Before heading to center stage, he said, “If my mom was alive today, she would have been so proud.” His body may have been on cloud nine, but his familial heart was beating aloud. I reminded him that I wanted to write his biography. Walking into the spotlight, he turned around and nodded a yes.

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He Didn't Stop Believin'

By Alex Pappademas

Photography by Andrew Hetherington

arnel pineda, who turns 41 this year, has been performing in bands since he was a teenager, and by now he has mastered virtually every kick-ass lead-singer move known to rock. He can launch his compact body off the drum riser and land without twisting an ankle. He plays excellent microphone-cord air guitar. He knows when to do the reach-out-and-touch with the fans in the front row and when to turn the microphone stand upside down and lift it above his head, as if calling down the lightning. He knows how to do these things because he is a professional lead singer and a good one, which means he is a virtuoso whose instrument is his own charisma. He is also adept at the parts of the lead-singer job that involve singing.

Until recently, the only place you could see Pineda doing any of this stuff was in Manila, where he and his band, the Zoo, appeared regularly at bars and nightclubs, or on the YouTube channel of an industrious Zoo fan named Noel Gomez, who has uploaded more than sixty video clips of the band performing live, usually on stages that resemble discarded sets from early-'90s late-night talk shows. It was thanks to those videos, in which Pineda sings the songs of Deep Purple, the Goo Goo Dolls, Heart, Stryper, Styx, Toto, Aerosmith, Bob Marley, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Simple Minds, Bryan Adams, Men at Work, the Beatles, and REO Speedwagon, that he wound up here at the Planet Hollywood hotel in Las Vegas on a Saturday in early March, playing his first U.S. show as the new lead singer of the legendary '80s rock band Journey.

It's a little after 8 p.m., and we've reached the point in "Any Way You Want It" where lead guitarist Neal Schon, who cofounded Journey in 1973, plays a precise yet impassioned hairspray-torch of a solo. This is Pineda's cue to sidle up to Schon and make your-guitar-playing-is-rocking-me-so-hard faces at him, prompting Schon to make equally ridiculous not-as-hard-as-it's-rocking-me-my-brother faces back. It's the kind of thing singers in arena rock bands have been doing during the guitar break since arenas were invented, and usually it's only entertaining if you know, for example, that the guitarist and the lead singer actually hate each other. But when Pineda does it, it's more than a gesture. He has performed this song live many times before, but he's still getting used to performing it with the band that made it famous, so when he does the grooving-on-the-solo thing, he appears genuinely awed,1 not only by the force of Schon's rocking but by the fact that he, Arnel Pineda, is actually being rocked by Neal Schon. When he turns to the audience—where fans have been waving the Philippine flag and their own homemade banners (arnel for president) in his general direction all night long—the look on his face is equal parts glee and disbelief.

"My life is a fairy tale," Pineda told me earlier. "But I'm awake, and I'm dreaming it."

if you're in a long-running classic-rock band and you find yourself without a lead singer, as Journey did last summer, you have several options, aside from retirement. The minute it's announced that you and your frontman have parted ways, aspirants to the position will begin sending you their CDs, whether or not you have asked for them.

But if you're Journey, at least a few of the innumerable bedroom karaoke-ists, tennis-racket axpersons, and car-dashboard drummers your music has inspired will have gone semipro, forming tribute bands that play your music in a Civil War–reenactment kind of way, which means you've also got a vast pool of ready-on-day-one understudies from which to draw. When Judas Priest made their first album without original lead singer Rob Halford in 1996, they drafted Tim "Ripper" Owens, an Akron office-supply salesman who sang Halford's parts in a Priest tribute band; thanks to the 2001 film Rock Star, in which Mark Wahlberg played an Owens manqué named Chris "Izzy" Cole, this is probably the most famous example of a band calling a singer up from the farm team.

It's a major crossroads, this frontman decision. You can bet on the future by tapping a singer who may have his own thing happening, or you can reinvest in your legacy by recruiting a singer who's been practicing your stuff for years. But when Journey parted ways with frontman Jeff Scott Soto last summer, Neal Schon began to wonder if there was another way to go.

What you need to know here is that the lead-singer slot in Journey has always been a high-turnover position, somewhere between "Mr. Pamela Anderson" and "drummer for Spinal Tap" on the volatility scale. Soto was either the third, fourth, or fifth guy to have the job, depending on whether or not you count keyboardist Gregg Rolie (responsible for some of the vocals on the band's first three albums) or Neal Schon (ditto) or Robert Fleischman (who sang live with the band and cowrote "Wheel in the Sky" but never appeared on a studio album). But as far as Journey's fans are concerned, there is but one true Journey vocalist, and his name is Steve Perry. Before Perry, Journey were a chops-flaunting jazz-rock outfit whose first three albums had sold poorly; when Columbia Records threatened to drop the band, their manager, Herbie Herbert, prevailed upon them to hire Perry, who had a supple tenor, a gawky, earnest stage presence, and one of the worst haircuts in rock. Together, he and Journey began writing new songs that showcased two of these three qualities, and by the turn of the decade they'd become one of the biggest bands on earth.

Sometimes pop songs are poetry, and sometimes they're art, and sometimes they're poetry transformed into art and written in airbrush on acid-washed denim. During the Perry years, Journey sang about dreamers on the run, about summer nights, about the lonely road. They once rhymed "walkin' a high wire" with "caught in a cross fire." They made videos so singularly ill-conceived—like "Separate Ways," which is clearly supposed to take place in the kind of gritty urban environment where one might find oneself caught in a cross fire while walking on a high wire but appears to have actually been filmed in the parking lot of an Ikea—that they now resemble_ Flight of the Conchords_ skits. Pete Townshend once said, "If you steer clear of quality, you're all right," but Journey played everything with an aerobic professionalism that suggested that quality was Job One. Most rock critics despised them; they were frequently lumped in with Styx and Foreigner and characterized as "faceless," an allegation the members of Journey say they neither appreciated nor understood.

By Chris Black

By John Del Signore

By Ilana Kaplan

They were never cool, and they were never dangerous. Cool, dangerous bands advocated the use of drugs, or at least testified to their allure; Journey signed a then groundbreaking endorsement deal with Budweiser and once arrived at a St. Louis gig in a carriage pulled by the brewer's iconic team of Clydesdales. Cool, dangerous bands lured their fans to the dark side using satanic iconography; Journey tempted their fans into arcades to pump quarters into Bally Midway's Journey video game.2 Cool, dangerous bands made parents nervous; any kid who tried to rebel by cranking the soaring and saccharine sounds of Frontiers or Escape deserved to be laughed at through his or her bedroom door (and sat down by an elder sibling for a stern talking-to about the greatness of Black Sabbath).3

But for about a decade, they could basically do no wrong in the eyes of the record-buying public, who fell hard for future classic-rock radio staples like the shamelessly inspirational "Don't Stop Believin'," the shamelessly sentimental "Faithfully," and the shamelessly self-explanatory "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'." 4 Cool, dangerous bands are rarely accessible; Journey wanted to speak to as many people as possible. It didn't matter what kind of car you drove; if you'd ever wished it were a Trans Am, Journey were singing to you. Between 1978 and 1986, every record they made went platinum.

In 1984, Perry made a solo album, _Street Talk, _which spawned the hit singles "Foolish Heart" and "Oh Sherrie"; Schon says its success put a strain on Perry's relationship with the rest of the band. Perry returned to the Journey fold to make one more record, _Raised on Radio, _before taking an indefinite hiatus in 1987, citing vocal and emotional burnout. Journey didn't play together again until 1995. They made a comeback album, Trial by Fire, and scheduled a reunion tour; then Perry injured his hip on a hike in Hawaii. He needed to replace the hip in order to play live, but put off getting the surgery; Schon says the band waited until they couldn't wait anymore. The next time Journey toured, their singer was Brooklyn-born Steve Augeri. He took flak from hard-core fans for sounding too much like Steve Perry, and then he stepped aside, citing a chronic throat infection, and handed the mike to Jeff Scott Soto, who took flak for not sounding Perryish enough. A subtext was developing: Journey's fans felt that no one other than Steve Perry was fit to sing Journey songs in the shower, let alone onstage.

In conversation, the members of Journey jokingly refer to Steve Perry as "He Who Cannot Be Named," like the evil wizard in the Harry Potter books. Later, I ask Schon about this, after reading an interview with their former manager in which it is alleged that Journey are somehow legally enjoined from speaking on the record about Perry.

"Oh, y'know," Schon says. "There's no legal issue. We just try not to. I mean, I didn't say anything inflammatory. I didn't talk about how he still gets paid like a motherfucker even though he shouldn't be. It's stuff like that I'm not allowed to talk about. He sorta just bitches and moans and whines about everything. And he just assumes that every time we bring up his name, that we're sayin' bad things."

no one in journey was excited about auditioning new singers, and none of the tribute-band Steves they looked at seemed like the answer. "I didn't think they had anything new to offer," Schon says, "other than making us a nostalgia act, and I wasn't interested in that."

Instead, Schon says, "I sat in my house for a couple days, hoping the almighty Internet would bring some relief."

He trawled YouTube, looking at all the live footage of male rock vocalists he could find. "You never know what you're getting on a CD," Schon says. "It can be all doctored in Pro Tools. You never know if somebody can sing unless you're watching something live." He found a few singers with potential—a couple of guys in England, doing "a Justin Timberlake–type thing." And then he stumbled on Noel Gomez's Zoo videos.

There are a few clips on YouTube of Pineda singing Journey songs like "Faithfully." His Steve Perry is almost eerily flawless; he nails both Perry's girlish quaver and the grit and pacing Perry borrowed from soul singers like Sam Cooke, and the fact that you can occasionally hear his accent makes the rest of the performance that much more uncanny. But Schon insists that what grabbed him about Pineda was his range. He slam-dunked Survivor. He tore up Toto. He made something out of "Makin' Love out of Nothing at All," and—spoiler alert—what he made out of it was love .

"The hair stood up on my arms," Schon says. "I got up off the computer and told my girlfriend, 'No way—this guy sounds too good. I don't believe it.' "

He went for a motorcycle ride. Thus are important rock-star decisions made. When he got back, he watched the clips again. Then he started calling his band. "I said, 'I found the singer,' " Schon says. "And they go, 'Where is he' And I'm like, 'He's in Manila!'

"And they go, 'Great—so you found a singer who can't speak English.' "

pineda's english is actually fine.

Right now he is trying to save his voice for tomorrow's show, so he speaks softly, which makes him seem as if he's in a state of perpetual awe (and maybe he is).

Pineda may have the most Dickensian backstory in rock history. His mother died when he was 13; his father took Pineda's siblings to live with relatives, and Pineda struck out on his own. He collected scrap metal, bottles, and old newspapers, usually bringing home the equivalent of thirty cents a day. Sometimes he'd sleep at a friend's house; more often than not, he'd sleep in Manila's Luneta Park, alone or with a group of other homeless kids. They drank from a fountain there and bathed in it, too; most mornings, Pineda would wake up sick from the dew. ("All clogged here," he says, pressing two fingers to his sinuses.)

His friend Monet Cajipe played guitar. Sometimes when Pineda wasn't working, he'd go over to Monet's house and they'd sing songs together. "He would bring me to his family," Pineda says, "and say, 'Come on, give some food to my friend,' because I was starving. They would make me sing, and then they would feed me. They would just bribe me with food."

At 15, Pineda tried out for a group called Ijos Band. He'd never sung with a real band before; during the audition, his voice was strong but his timing was weak. The bandleader saw something in him anyway, and when the other members of Ijos groused about having to split their nightly take with an extra man, one of the bandleader's friends came to the rescue, offering to pay Arnel's salary—thirty-five pesos a night—out of his own pocket. Perks of the job included a tiny room under the guitarist's front stairs, where Pineda could sleep.

He went on to cofound a band called Amo, which evolved into a band called New Age, featuring Cajipe on guitar. Like many Filipino bands, they played a mix of original material and covers of American and British rock and pop. While the U.S. occupation shaped Filipino musical culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Philippines truly became a cover-band nation in the '60s, when the islands served as a way station for troops en route to or from the Vietnam War and every nightclub needed bands who could entertain American servicemen with Top 40 rock 'n' roll. To this day, Pineda says, "if you only play original songs, [audiences in the Philippines] will not appreciate you 100 percent. They want to hear you singing other bands' songs that made it to number one. Like Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Journey."

In the early '90s, New Age relocated to Hong Kong, a time-honored path for -Filipino musicians seeking their fortune. It didn't go so well. Playing the same cover tunes every night began to drive Pineda crazy. He was bored, so he drank, took drugs, and generally pursued any and all forms of rock 'n' roll self-destruction available to a boy from Manila adrift on the Hong Kong bar circuit. Before long, he'd wrecked his voice. When he found he could no longer hit the high notes in Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight," he went to a doctor, who told him to retire. He was 27.

"He said, 'You're finished. Your vocal is just done,' " Pineda says. "I did not believe him. I told myself, I can get it back."

He returned to the Philippines, got straight, learned to sing again. He recorded a self-titled solo album in 2000; he and Cajipe started the Zoo. They recorded their first album,_ Zoology_. For a man who'd been told he'd never sing again, it was a happy enough ending. Then, last summer, the phone rang.

When Pineda went to get his visa, the guy who interviewed him at the embassy—"His name is Ben. I can't forget his name," Pineda says—was a fan who'd seen him play with the Zoo a couple of times, so Pineda took a request, and everybody in the office looked up from their desks at the guy singing "Wheel in the Sky."

He flew to San Francisco, spent a day jamming with the band at their rehearsal space. He hadn't slept much on the flight over, so his voice kept cracking, and he assumed he'd blown it, but he almost didn't care. He'd come to America and sung with a band he'd loved since he was 12 years old. He'd shot some home movies of them on his camcorder—a YouTube-able epilogue to his crazy YouTube adventure. He was ready to settle for that. But that jam session led to a long day in the studio, where Pineda sang two new songs and four or five of the Dirty Dozen—nailing most of them in one take—and by the time it was over, he'd passed the audition.

"Arnel cared about getting it right," band member Jonathan Cain says. "There wasn't this arrogance—the Lead Singer Disease that so many guys have when they have fantastic voices."

let us consider the New Guy.

In life, the New Guy gets the office that was once a closet full of printer paper, or maybe still is; the New Guy is told about bogus traditions involving the New Guy picking up the lunch tab; the New Guy spends a lot of time wondering what's so funny.

The New Guy's phone rings, but it's not for him. He disappoints people just by picking it up. _No, I'm sorry—he's not here anymore. Is there something I can help you with _

In rock, being the New Guy is the same, except harder. The jokes you don't know go back to some long, snowy between-concerts bus ride circa 1984. And you're trying to inhabit a stadium-sized myth, not a cubicle. You might win over a few late-to-the-party fans, but your presence alone will always be proof to some people that the band has outlived its awesomeness. A band with a New Guy on vocals is like a late-period Happy Days episode, one of the ones where nobody's left except Ted McGinley and a middle-aged Fonz who can barely zip the leather jacket. And because the only way for a band in this position to shake off the taint of the glue factory is to reunite with its original singer, the New Guy in a rock band is always a dead man rocking.

Tim Owens got seven years with Judas Priest before Rob Halford returned. Anyone not named David Lee Roth who agrees to sing for Van Halen is basically keeping the leather pants warm for Diamond Dave. And however comfortable Pineda's been made to feel during the past few months, he must know on some level that Steve Augeri and Jeff Soto once felt comfortable, too. Toward the end of our interview, as dusk bleaches the color from the desert outside the window, I ask him if he's thought about how long this is going to last.

"Well, of course," he says. "Of course I did. I'm a very realistic person. I like to plan. I like to see the future. If I'm lucky, if I'm still strong, I want to be with them for the next three years. And if they still like me after that, I still want to be with them. And hopefully we will create new Journey music that people will love."

And at some point, I suggest, you'll become essential. People will say Journey without Arnel, who wants that

"I just want to be a part of a band that will be able to reinvent themselves, you know" Pineda says. "And I think they will be able to help me build a future, with my family. They will help me financially. They can help me with that. Because all of us need a good future for our children, for our families."

It's true, we do. The members of Journey talk about Pineda like he's given them their youth back, the way thrice-married men talk about the young wives who've got them doing wheatgrass shots and yoga, listening to the Killers. It's never too late to feel like you're going to live forever. "I think we're reborn, right now, with Arnel," Schon says.

He talks about the band's first show with Pineda in Chile, how Arnel was all over the stage, jumping around, surprising everyone, and making Schon—who's playing a cordless guitar for the first time since the '80s—feel the need to step his game up. "I'm gonna be riding my bicycle a lot, and skating," he says, "and getting myself in tip-top shape so I can keep up with this little guy."

When Journey were off the road last year, during the gap between singers, it gave Schon time to get sober. When we talk, it's been nine months. "I believe I was a functioning alcoholic," he says—he'd stay straight for shows but kill a bottle of vodka on the tour bus afterward, and that went on for years. So this moment is also a rebirth for Schon; he's facing all of it straight for the first time. "I feel like I have 100 percent of myself here," he says, "and I'm really excited about getting out there and being completely in control."

Pineda's arrival lets them zero out the odometer. "Had I known Arnel was around fifteen years ago," Schon says, "singing even better than he is now—Goddammit, I would have called him!"

journey may not want to be thought of as a nostalgia act. But they are clearly totally fine with being an act that benefits from nostalgia. When I ask Cain why people still care about Journey in 2008, his response is basically a definition of the term:

"It's music they grew up to," he says. "Fell in love with. Had sex with. Got married to. Graduated from high school or college with. It's a moment frozen in time, and when they remember those moments, they remember those songs. Y'know, the '70s and '80s were awesome times. There was a lot less trouble in the world. And it's like people wanna go back to that simpler place and time. We see these housewives—they used to come to our shows when they were teenagers, and now it's like The Big Chill. They come back, they get a room, and they come see Journey. And I see 'em in the bars and buy 'em a drink and talk to 'em. Or there'll be a daughter that's bringing her mom to a Journey show as a birthday present, because she didn't get to see us back then. And you're like, 'Oh my God—I'm part of this.' "

How Journey's fan base will respond to the band's new incarnation is another question. Journey's new album, Revelation, will be available in June, exclusively at Wal-Mart. In this regard, they're following in the footsteps of the Eagles, who've sold 2.9 million copies of their album Long Road out of Eden through the big-box retailer since last October.

The album package will consist of a CD featuring eleven new Journey songs with Pineda on vocals, a DVD of the Planet Hollywood show, and a third disc featuring Pineda-sung rerecordings of eleven Journey classics whose original iterations featured you-know-who. Depending on how you look at it, this rewrite of the band's history is either a huge vote of confidence for Pineda or the rock 'n' roll equivalent of trying to prove to yourself that you're over your ex-girlfriend by dating a woman who looks exactly like her. And it's a move guaranteed to piss off more than a few Journey fans—even the album's producer, Kevin Shirley, compares it to "roxing the Holy Grail."5

I get a hint of the backlash that may be on the way when, a week or so before the Vegas show, I post a thread on the Journey message board at Melodicrock.com, an Internet forum for people with strong opinions about power balladry and Night Ranger side projects. I ask people to tell me their Journey stories; I ask people what they think of Pineda. I give out my e-mail address. Within minutes, my in-box fills up with e-mails—angry, passionate e-mails.

I hear from a few thick-and-thin super-fans, from plenty of reasonable people ready to give Arnel a fair shake, and even a few early Pineda converts. But I also hear from people frustrated by the band's -inability to hold on to a lead singer and from people who resent the band for continuing on at all. But mostly, I hear from people who have not stopped believing in Steve Perry. They compare him to Elvis, John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, and God. They describe the post-Perry band as "a second-class rendition of Journey." They send me all-caps e-mails—Steve Perry really brings out the caps-lock in people—that begin "IT HAD BEEN BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT YOU ARE LOOKING TO WRIGHT AN ARTICLE ABOUT WHY JOURNEY IS NO LONGER JOURNEY BUT NOTHING MORE THEN A TRIBUTE BAND TO THE BEST SOFT ROCK BAND EVER." They send me photomosaics of Steve Perry created out of many, many tiny little pictures of Steve Perry.

"You want to know why the 'fascination' with Journey all of a sudden" writes Thomas Cordea of Fort Wayne, Indiana. "With the hiring of a blatant 'sound-alike' singer, the world is 're-awakening' to the fact that THEY MISS STEVE PERRY LIKE MAD.… That is the real 'hidden' storyline of your article, not this latest frontman hire."

Maybe. But this latest frontman hire still seems like the first smart move Journey have made in years. They've got a guy who can sing the Perry material on tour. They're excited about making new music with him. And the fact that they discovered Pineda on YouTube has given them a ready-made PR hook. In a clicky, viral, cell-phone-delivered media moment where even the twice-weekly cult-of-the-amateur hour that is _American Idol _seems like a rusty piece of star-making machinery and Simon Cowell like a snooty gatekeeper, Journey—Journey!—seem like innovators, in touch with the forces shaping the culture. For a band prominently featured in people's memories of the Carter administration, this is pretty impressive.

This doesn't change the fact that they're Journey —emblematic of the way '70s rock betrayed the '60s in the '80s, part of the problem that punk's loogie-hawking historical rebuke supposedly solved. The middleman-eliminating YouTube story line can't make them cool; neither can the existence of a Journey-branded "Virtual Island" in the online nerdiverse Second Life. But coolness accrues in unexpected ways; once-verboten things slip out of cultural jail under cover of irony.

five signs the journey revival is imminent or possibly already here, in descending order of cultural impact:

1. David Chase uses "Don't Stop Believin'" in the last scene of the last episode of The Sopranos. It either is or isn't the last song Tony Soprano ever hears. (A week after the episode airs, Hillary and la famiglia Clinton parody this scene, right down to the onion rings, in a viral-video campaign ad.)

2. Drolly doleful indie rockers—Badly Drawn Boy, Of Montreal—begin slipping ironic-but-maybe-sincere "Don't Stop Believin'" covers into their live sets. Kanye West does, too—at the shows he played in Europe shortly after his mother's death, it often followed "Hey Mama," the one he couldn't get through without crying.

3. Literate classic-rock obsessive Craig Finn and his Brooklyn-via-Minnesota meta–bar band, the Hold Steady, reference Journey in song: My name is Steve Perry, but people call me Circuit City.… My name's Neal Schon, but people call me Nina Simone.

4. Petra Haden, formerly of the late, lamented three-girls-and-a-guy alt-rock band that dog., records an a cappella cover of "Don't Stop Believin'." Haden: "My favorite part is singing that guitar solo. I always end up laughing at the end. I shouldn't, because it's supposed to be so serious. But I always do."

5. Some aspiring George Romero with access to a camcorder and a backyard uploads a no-budget horror short called "Journey of the Dead" to YouTube. Synopsis: "Steve Perry (former lead singer of Journey) saves a Rock and Roll loving couple from an attack by Rock Star Drummer Zombies. After a violent and bloody battle with the zombies, Steve Perry emerges victorious (as always) and then finds himself engaged in a karate showdown with the ultimate evil lead singer mastermind, Freddie Mercury!" Best quote: "Hey, zombie-breath—you picked the wrong day to not be dead! Now you're going to have to face Steve Perry!"

tapping somebody who can do Perry as well as Pineda can may indicate that the band want that uncomplicated approval they got from their audience during the Perry years, as opposed to the problematic tough love they're getting now. Or maybe Neal Schon—who started Journey, spent years building an audience through tireless touring (traveling, in the early days, in four-door station wagons, rolling into the venue just in time to jump onstage and play—who says Journey weren't punk) before having Perry foisted upon him in 1977 for reasons of commercial expediency, and has spent the post-Perry years being accused of sacrilege for daring to continue playing in the band he founded in the first place—wants to prove that it is he and his bandmates who make it Journey.

But when I ask Schon if he's at all tired of Journey being defined by Perry's presence or absence, he answers, "Um, no. I think he contributed so much to the sound of the band. Those songs are gonna be embedded in everybody's heads and hearts forever."

I get a slightly different take from Steve Perry, who calls from his home near San -Diego. Perry, who's finally started working on his first album of new material since leaving Journey, doesn't want to talk about the vocalists who've followed in his footsteps, Pineda included. "I only know that they've been through three guys," he says, "and I've never heard any of them. I stay away from it, because it's really none of my business now. We have children together, which are the songs we wrote, but that's about all."

But he will talk about what it was like when he joined a Journey already in progress in 1977, shedding a little light on what it might feel like to be Pineda now. "You've got to remember, they didn't want to make it with a lead singer," he says. "They wanted to make it without one."

I ask him about the scene in VH1's Journey_ Behind the Music _episode in which Perry declares that he "never really felt like part of the band." Was that because Schon resented having to hire a frontman

"What that meant," Perry says, "was that there was a period of time where I always felt that I had to prove myself. But along with that, you have to print that I can't blame them. It was [Neal's] band. Herbie Herbert built that band around Neal because he's a star on his own, from a guitar standpoint. There's nobody who plays like Neal Schon, to this day. I still miss his playing. We don't get along, but I love his playing.

"They wanted to make it on their own goalposts that they had in mind. There's nothing wrong with that. And I hope you print that, because it's important that people know that. I'm not bitchin'. I'm not whining. I completely understand how they felt and why."

the security people at the Planet Hollywood show—even the women—have the hired-muscle intimidation factor of pit bosses. For all I know, they are pit bosses. But at the end of the Planet Hollywood show, when Journey come back out to redo a couple of songs for the DVD—"We have to do one of the new ones again," Schon says cheerfully, "because we fucked it up!"6—the crowd-control policy is relad and people are allowed to come down the floor-seat aisles and up to the stage to scream and clutch at Pineda, presumably because this will make the show look more exciting on-camera. Someone hands him up a tiny Philippine flag on a wooden stand, the kind a diplomat keeps on his desk, and he stares at it for what counts, in rock-show time, as a long moment, before handing it back.

The do-overs end the night with a sort of anticlimactic thud, but overall it's been a good show, particularly for Pineda. Almost half the crowd—and this is an unscientific estimate based on what the nonwhite people looked like when I turned around—appeared to be Filipino, and from the first note he sang, they were his. And while none of the new Journey songs will make anybody forget "Don't Stop Believin'"—as always, the words "Here's another one from the new album" are the classic-rock-show audience's cue for a bathroom break—some of them are pretty affecting.

Kevin Shirley described "After All These Years" to me as "like 'Faithfully: Part 2'—it's a gem," and it kind of is. Like "Faithfully" (Journey's greatest gift to wedding DJs), it's a soaring, soulful ballad, readable as both a pledge of eternal fealty and a love letter to the fans. But the "all these years" theme adds the weight of long-term commitment to the mix; a song like this is how you tell your audience you'd marry them all over again. And while it's not anywhere near as good as "Faithfully," you can imagine it someday becoming part of the canon. Someday it will be performed by a singer in a smoky room—some Hong Kong piano bar, maybe—and traveling salesmen far from hearth and home will shed a tear or two, and maybe that's all that matters.

Afterward, there's a bottleneck in the lobby of the theater. As everyone shuffles slowly toward the doors that lead to the mezzanine above the casino, someone in the crowd starts singing the Nah nah, na nah nah / Na na na nah nah refrain from "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'," the last song of the night. (It's the one song in Journey's catalog where you can most clearly hear the Sam Cooke mannerisms in Steve Perry's delivery, and Pineda nailed it—an Asian guy imitating a white Californian imitating a black guy from Chicago, on a stage in a Las Vegas hotel with "Hollywood" in the name. The mind reels.)

Then, as if the air-conditioning has started pumping karaoke spores, other people join in and start singing Nah nah, na nah nah / Na na na nah nah, too. It only lasts for a few seconds, but those seconds are maybe the most sincere moment of community I've experienced at a rock show in a long, long time—and they feel like proof that the Pineda-fronted version of Journey has succeeded in giving people the kind of life-affirming Journey experience they were looking for.

Later there's a VIP meet-and-greet in a high-ceilinged Planet Hollywood banquet room. Trickling in like they've timed their entrances, the band pose for pictures and sign T-shirts, albums, ticket stubs. The energy is a little flat until Arnel appears, wearing a shiny long-sleeve T-shirt, his hair pulled back in a ponytail. People immediately crowd around him, waving digital cameras; somebody shouts, "Move back, move back!" He makes it to the other side of the room, still swarmed by fans—many of them Filipino, many of them girls. I try to ask Arnel a couple of questions about the show, which yields a brief interview, reproduced here in its entirety:

Q. How's it going, Arnel A. Hey, man!

Then someone else gets his attention and he's off, posing for another photo. Instead, I interview Patty Zaragoza, who's a flight attendant "representing the Cathay Pacific cabin crew." She doesn't know much about Journey, but she's a fan of Pineda's—she used to see him perform in Hong Kong, at a bar called Grammy's. She gives me a blue Cathay Pacific lanyard, in case the one that came with my Journey backstage pass ceases to function. I turn around to try to get another word or two with Pineda, but he's mobbed. The crowd swallows him. He is, at least for now, a rock star.

the day before the show, I ask Kevin Shirley if he feels Pineda has fully processed everything that's happened to him during the past few months.

"No," Shirley says. "No, I don't think he has. I think the record needs to come out. I think he needs to go on tour. I think he still has a lot of fear about whether he can play this set every night. But he can. I feel very confident. But yeah—once all that settles in, and maybe once he gets his first royalty check. In the meantime, it's like, 'Can you buy me a sandwich I'm the lead singer of Journey!' "

alex pappademas is a GQ staff writer.

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Silverdocs: How Journey Found A New Lead Singer And Made Friends In Manila

Linda Holmes

Arnel Pineda became the lead singer of Journey in late 2007. Silverdocs hide caption

Arnel Pineda became the lead singer of Journey in late 2007.

One of the oddest things about the story of Arnel Pineda is that it's not actually quite as odd as it might seem.

Pineda was a bar and club singer working in Manila in 2007, doing some original material but finding an audience mostly for his covers, when he got an e-mail from Neal Schon, the guitarist from Journey. Schon had seen videos of Pineda performing on YouTube and asked him to come to San Francisco and audition to become the band's new lead singer. From Journey fan to Journey member, because of YouTube.

That's the hook of Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey , which opened Silverdocs on Monday night. Director Ramona S. Diaz followed Pineda and the band from the time shortly after he started rehearsing with them through their very successful 2008 tour and their – the word is a cliché, but it applies – triumphant show in Manila in March 2009 when they brought him back home a hero, the successful lead singer of an iconic American band.

There is a certain fairytale quality to all of it – the guy who was singing Journey covers when he suddenly got The Call – but really, it's not that weird. Schon didn't stumble on him accidentally or get an e-mail from someone that said "You've got to see this guy!!!"; he found Pineda while specifically searching YouTube for lead singers, because it's a not-unusual way to find musicians. Maybe he was even looking for lead singers doing Journey songs. Maybe even for lead singers doing Journey songs who sounded a lot like former lead singer Steve Perry – which Pineda surely does. Other than the fact that he was in the Philippines, Schon found his guy the way he set out to find him.

Pineda isn't quite as young as he sometimes seems in the film; he can seem like a kid, but he turned 41 during the 2008 tour. He's a stretch younger than guys like Schon, who's pushing 60, but he's not Justin Bieber being plucked from YouTube because he's never done anything. The story threatens at times to become a wacky internet novelty, but at its best, it's something a bit more satisfying than that. At its best, it's about a working singer – not a YouTube fluke, but a working, day-in-day-out singer who's been playing for years and years – can suddenly find himself jumped to the head of the line, playing to 22,000 people with musicians he's admired all his life. It doesn't have a lot to do with YouTube; the better story is about a band taking a huge risk on a completely unknown quantity because they need a guy and they found one they think will be a fit.

(As a side note, as tempting as the "Don't Stop Believin'" title is, I would have gone with a variation on "Journeyman." Just a suggestion, pun-wise.)

The best parts of the film focus on Pineda; he has a playful attitude toward his own sometimes overwhelming anxiety about the situation into which he's been thrust. He turns out to be a terrific fit for the band, despite his own comment that partly because he's "so Asian," he looks like they Photoshopped him in when Journey has photos taken. In fact, one of the guys in the band comments that bringing something a little more "international" to the "all-American" group is probably an advantage – a prediction that proves true when Pineda helps the band develop an impassioned following of Filipino-American fans in addition to the people back home in Manila. (The security team notes at one point that for some of Arnel's fans, he's "like Elvis.")

But at almost two hours, the film feels long. It comes to what seems like a natural ending at one point, and then it goes on for probably another 20 minutes. There are some background segments on the general history of Journey that don't seem to have been made with the love that went into the Pineda-era stuff, and a persistent subplot about Pineda getting colds and drinking tean — while care of the voice makes a nice tour detail — keeps coming back and back and back but never really goes anywhere.

Then there is also the problem of "Don't Stop Believin'" itself. I don't think it's a spoiler – I really, truly cannot imagine how it could be – to tell you that the film builds to the performance of that particular song. This tour happened after The Sopranos put "Don't Stop Believin'" in the spotlight but before Glee put it there again, and the closing titles of the film point out that it's now the most downloaded song written in the 20 th century. But at some point, waiting for it becomes a bit of a tease, and the build to the performance (and the holding out on playing much of that song after playing most of Journey's others that are well-known, sometimes more than once) turns into a game. I would have dropped the bomb a little sooner, just to avoid the sense of inevitability.

But the film is fun, and it's worth seeing, not because it's the tale of an internet sensation, but because it's the tale of a bunch of guys who really, really want to hear crowds scream – either again or for the first time ever. As much as it's about how a band lifted an unknown singer into a dreamlike world of screaming crowds and far more money than he'd ever known, it's also about how a band found just the right guy at just the right time to help capitalize on the surprise comeback of one of the band's most famous songs. Pineda says at one point that it's like hitting the lotto, what happened to him, but in truth, Schon hit the lotto, too. You can see the guys standing around him at certain moments, looking at him or watching him perform, realizing that he's incredibly grateful to them, but in fact, without him, they are out of luck .

There's an argument to be made that when you set out to find your new lead singer looking specifically for someone who can sing your existing hits and make them sound just like they did when your old lead singer sang them – rather than being primarily focused on a guy who can contribute to whatever your next identity is – you run the risk of essentially covering your own music. Under this theory, Pineda was originally recruited to be the lead singer of the most famous Journey cover band in the world – the one called Journey. But they have since released two albums of new material, and it seems to be a little more than that. It may even be a little more than Schon expected to find on YouTube.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey

• Episode aired Mar 8, 2013

A documentary on Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the new singer for the rock & roll band, Journey. A documentary on Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the new singer for the rock & roll band, Journey. A documentary on Arnel Pineda, who was plucked from YouTube to become the new singer for the rock & roll band, Journey.

• Ramona S. Diaz
• Jeffrey Dinsmore
• Lois Vossen
• Arnel Pineda
• Jonathan Cain
• 9 User reviews
• 26 Critic reviews
• 53 Metascore
• 1 win & 1 nomination

• Self - lead vocalist, Journey

• Self - lead guitar, Journey
• Self - keyboards and rhythm guitar, Journey

• Self - bass, Journey
• Self - drums, Journey
• Self - manager, Journey
• Self - Arnel Pineda's greatest fan
• Self - Arnel Pineda's wife

• (archive footage)

• Self - lead vocalist 1977-1998, Journey
• Self - Arnel Pineda's brother
• Self - lead vocalist 1998-2006, Journey
• Self - tour manager 1998-2010, Journey
• Self - stage manager, Journey

• Self - bass and vocals, Chicago

• Self - lead singer, Heart
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Soundtracks Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) written by Jonathan Cain & Steve Perry courtesy of Jonathan Cain (as John Friga) & Steve Perry

User reviews 9

• May 5, 2012
• March 8, 2013 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official site
• ジャーニー　ドント・ストップ・ビリーヴィン
• Moises Salvador Elementary School, Manila, Philippines
• Arcady Bay Entertainment
• Defining Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 45 minutes

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The incredible journey of Arnel Pineda

A documentary on the unlikely rise of a singer in philippines to frontman of the us band journey finally hits theatres..

Journey in Manila, with Arnel Pineda, centre. Courtesy Emerging Pictures

In between gigs, a young prince of rock 'n' roll sinks into his cushions and sighs.

"I'm living a fairy tale right now."

Truly, Arnel Pineda's life story is the stuff of fairy tales - a poor boy with a golden voice finds his way to become the lead singer of a legendary rock band. It's a modern day, real-life Cinderella story, not to mention a version of the 2001 Mark Wahlberg film Rock Star , which in turn was based on the heavy metal group Judas Priest, who replaced their frontman with one found performing in a tribute band.

Pineda's story unfolds in the documentary Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey , which was an official selection last year at the Tribeca Film Festival and the winner of the Audience Award at the 2013 Palm Springs International Film Festival. The film has just gone on wide release in cinemas in the US.

Brace yourself for a goosebumpy ride. The film goes on the road with Journey, criss-crossing hemispheres and timelines, to chronicle the intersecting destinies of Pineda and the iconic rock band in this age of the internet and social media.

The central story that started it all is itself an internet legend. Back in the summer of 2007, the members of Journey, who got together in 1973 and disbanded several times in the ensuing decades, began searching for a new lead singer. It was a tall order considering the anointed one would be stepping into the very big shoes of departed singer Steve Perry. The group, who hit the height of their popularity in the early 1980s with big, rich rock hits including Open Arms , Faithfully and Don't Stop Believin' , have sold more than 80 million albums worldwide.

After trawling YouTube for possible leads and almost ready to give up, the lead guitarist Neal Schon clicked on one last video. There popped up Pineda onstage in the Philippines, singing Journey cover songs for his band The Zoo. "This is too good to be true," said Schon.

Emails were sent, and soon an incredulous Pineda found himself in San Francisco to audition for the lead role.

Voice for a visa

The film's director Ramona S Diaz recounts how she was first inspired to make the documentary. In 2008, she received an email from a friend in Manila with the title "Best US Embassy Visa Application Story". Written by one of the immigration agents at the American Embassy in Manila, it was about Pineda, who said that the reason he was going to the US was that he was invited by Journey to audition for lead vocals.

"Journey? The rock band Journey?" the dubious agent had asked, and Pineda could only nod meekly, producing some flimsy email correspondence from the band. So Pineda was asked to sing Wheel in the Sky . He belted it out loud enough for the entire waiting room to stop and listen.

"Look sir," said the agent, "there isn't a person in this embassy who would believe that story! So I'm giving you that visa. You're going to try out. And you're going to make it."

And make it he did.

Rags to riches to racism

Pineda, who once had to sing for food, who lost his mother when he was 13 and grew up in a family so poor his father had to send siblings to live with relatives, who quit school and struck out on his own to ease the burden, spending two years on the streets before finding some domestic success as a musician, today performs in front of thousands in sold-out concerts all over the world.

His story was covered in Rolling Stone , he performed at a Super Bowl pregame show and he was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show . Yet many times he'd still wonder if it was all a dream. In one scene, he says: "Why me? I'm short, I'm so Asian … it was like I was just edited in with Photoshop!"

Since 2007 Pineda has recorded two albums with the rejuvenated band: Revelation in 2008 and 2011's Eclipse . But Everyman is about life on the road, and in it the frontman proves an endearing, soulful character, a nice guy who suffered at an early age and is now reaping a lifetime's worth of good karma.

Says Diaz: "As we've travelled to film festivals the world over, it's apparent that audiences young and old feel a powerful kinship with Arnel. The bursts of applause and the standing ovations have overwhelmed us.

"Audiences truly like Arnel, they root for him because his success affirms that in this crazy world we live in, good things still happen to good people."

Now what fairy tale would be complete without a villain? Or in this story, villains - the haters, critics and downright racists who hurled their insults in cyberspace. If the internet was what got Pineda discovered, it was also where wickedness thrived - where such insults as "garbage," "impersonator" and "monkey" were slung.

"Arnel was very aware of that," says Diaz. "The internet has no gatekeeper. But he chose to ignore it, he knew he couldn't please everyone. He couldn't let that seep into his consciousness. Also, he had no time to focus on that because he was on tour."

It's an issue that Pineda addresses in the film. "There are people out there who want me to fail," he says. "I'm sticking to those people who believe in me."

Those people could translate into a whole country as his backup. As one Filipino fan commented in the film, when Journey chose Pineda for the lead, "they inherited a nation".

Rock 'n' road

So what was it like going on the road with Journey for a year? "It's really not glamorous," says Diaz. "They're working 24/7 for a two-hour act, every minute getting to those two hours on stage is hard work."

She was very impressed, however, describing the group as a "well-oiled machine with many moving parts".

As for the whole "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" cliché? Surprise, surprise - there wasn't even alcohol in the dressing room. "As the band has reached a certain level of maturity, they've passed all that - they were all sober."

Feel-good tale

During a gruelling year on the road, Diaz, of course, had no way of knowing how her film would end. "As a documentary filmmaker, one of the most exciting things about the process is not knowing how it's going to turn out," says Diaz. "Observing life as it unfolds through the camera's lens is a privilege."

Ultimately, Everyman's Journey is a feel-good film with a great soundtrack and a positive message. It shows the soft side of rock, seen in the warmth and enduring faith of the veteran rock stars Neal Schon, Ross Valory, Jon Cain, Deen Castronovo and the band manager John Baruck, in their fellowship of strings.

"No matter how clichéd it seems, it really is a story of never giving up," says Diaz. "Or, at the very least, surrounding yourself with friends who never stop believing in you."

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The Truth About How Arnel Pineda Joined Journey

Arnel Pineda's path to Journey is something out of a Hollywood movie, complete with tragedy and triumph.

Pineda, who became the lead singer of the band in 2007, was discovered by lead guitarist Neal Schon on Youtube and the rest was history. According to Pineda's official website biography, Schon saw Pineda singing with his then band The Zoo on Youtube and was impressed by how much he sounded like former Journey lead singer Steve Perry. But his path to stardom was very different.

Pineda grew up in the Philippines, where he began his career from the very bottom. He said in a 2010 interview that he left school early after his mother died and his family had to leave their old apartment. He lived in the streets of Manila for two years, working odd jobs, bathing out of gas station water barrels, and surviving off sardines and rationed biscuits. By the time he was 15, he had joined a band and began making a name for himself.

Over the next decade, he would continue performing to larger audiences, which eventually led to gigs in Hong Kong. A friend of Pineda's uploaded one of these performances to Youtube and a star was born.

The journey to Journey

Pineda told Rolling Stone  that Schon found his friend's email and asked how he could contact the singer. When news reached Pineda that Journey's guitarist was looking for him, he thought it was a joke.

"When my friend forwarded the email to me, I was just laughing," Pineda told Rolling Stone in 2017. "I just told him that this is one of the biggest jokes I have ever received from someone. 'It's a hoax,' I tell him. 'You shouldn't believe it.'"

But Pineda did email Schon back and flew to California to meet with him for a week of intense, nerve-wracking auditions. Finally, in December 2007, Journey announced Pineda as its new lead singer.

Now, Pineda's story may soon be turned into Hollywood film, directed by Crazy Rich Asians director Jon Chu. According to the Philippine news website ABS-CBN , Pineda met with the director and other producers to get the ball rolling, stating in Filipino that he's excited for the movie to happen so that other dreamers like him can find much-needed inspiration, and that it might open more doors for other Filipino and Asian artists.

If it pans out, this won't be the first time Pineda's story was told on film. The 2012 documentary Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey followed the band on one of its tours, including Pineda's homecoming concert in Manila.

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Inside the New Journey Documentary ‘Don’t Stop Believin': Everyman’s Journey’ With Director Ramona Diaz

The story of Journey finding their latest lead singer Arnel Pineda on YouTube is a tale that’s both well-known at this point, and hugely inspirational to others hoping that perhaps a similar type of rock star fame might someday come their way.

‘ Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey ’ is a new documentary that offers a bird’s-eye view of the Filipino-born Pineda and his eventual rise to success as the front man of one of America’s most successful rock and roll bands. The cameras were rolling as Pineda started his new life with Journey in 2008, tracking each moment as he began to win over concert audiences worldwide.

His enthusiastic passion for the legendary songs that he was singing each night, and the love that he had for a group that had inspired him so much as a vocalist -- which he was now part of -- were unmistakable.

The new film begins screening this weekend in theaters and on demand. We spoke with director Ramona S. Diaz about the experience of putting the documentary together.

Let’s start at the top. How did this project come about?

You know, I had heard of Arnel getting the gig through this email that was actually written by an immigration officer at the American Embassy in the Philippines who gave Arnel his visa to come to the U.S. That’s when it started. One thing led to another, and my manager called their manager, and there was a big back and forth of whether they had the story this year [in 2008] or was it [going to be] next year? And I said, “No, you have a story this year, because I think next year, the second year with the band, it’s a story, certainly, but it won’t be the story. I think it would be more dynamic and compelling [now].”

So they allowed me to film one day with the band, to show them and prove to them that they had the story. That’s when I met Arnel and then decided, “Wow, he’s really golden.” There’s something about Arnel that’s really compelling. So that’s when I decided that, "I’ve gotta make this film," and that I was that obsessed that, “Okay, this has got to happen.”

I filmed the band for a day as they rehearsed in Northern California, before their ‘Revelation’ tour in ‘08 and cut a 10-minute piece [from that] and sent it to management and they got back to us within 24 hours and said, “Come aboard, we’re hitting the road -- come with us!” I was like, “Great,” [because] we had no money, but I have a producer who made it happen.

You had a fairly large team of people working on this film. You mentioned the money issues -- how did it eventually come together so that you were able to do this?

It never came together. Seriously. This is an independently produced film. It would have been different if the band came to us and said, “Hey, make this fantastic film.” We were sort of going after that [which didn’t happen] and then they finally said yes, so we couldn’t say, “Oh yeah, can you pay for it?” So basically, my producer Capella [Fahoome Brogden] put it on her credit cards and then when she ran out of that, I borrowed money from my family and then we got some investors from friends and family, [who provided] small, small amounts of money.

That’s really how we’ve cobbled this whole thing [together]. And also at some point when the band then realized, “Oh okay, this might be something,” [they wanted to help out]. Because I don’t think they ever really [knew what it was going to be like], although they gave us access. They’re veteran rockers and I thought they were used to cameras backstage and on buses, but they weren’t used to it. They didn’t really understand what it meant to have us there constantly. So for a while, they didn’t really get it and now it makes sense to me. Someone explained to me that they were right at the cusp of [the arrival of] MTV, [before] MTV brought out the ubiquitous cameras backstage and stuff. So now it makes sense that they weren’t used to it.

They didn’t really get what the film would look like or how it would all come together. When they started getting an inkling [that], “Oh, this might be something,” two years into the project, by then we didn’t want to cross that line either of taking their money. Because then we were making [what becomes] a vanity project [by doing that], right? We needed to stay independent. So that’s what we’ve done this entire time.

What were the parameters that were laid down as far as what you could and couldn’t shoot and anything else like that boundary-wise?

You know, nothing really. They didn’t tell us that, “You couldn’t be here,” or “You couldn’t be there.” But the tough thing was when I requested that I film their process. I wanted to film them writing a song. They eventually gave me permission, but we were then, I think, a couple of years into the project. I just kept pushing. I said, “I’ve got to see that -- I’ve got to see how you guys do that.”

They gave me permission finally when we were in Manila, right after the concert and they wrote ‘ City of Hope ,’ which they dedicated to Arnel and the city of Manila, because they were so inspired. I said, “You’ve gotta let me film this.” By then, they knew me and they knew that I wasn’t out to get them. I think it’s just a matter of hanging out long enough that they trust you and they get used to you and [know that] you’re not [out to] get the “gotcha” moments. That wasn’t what I was after and they really fully understood that by the time that we were done.

You were following the band for two years and on paper, that looks like an extensive amount of filming. Can you talk about that part of the process?

We started in 2008, which was the summer tour and that was from June through September and even that summer, we jumped on and off. We covered the country, but we jumped on and off, because you know, we’d run out of money. So we’d jump off, make some commercials, raise some money and jump back on. So that was that whole summer, and then we followed Arnel to Manila right after the tour, because I wanted to see how he would adjust to his new life.

In 2009, we went back to Manila with the band and then after that, I actually continued filming with the guys in their homes. Which is not in the film -- I thought the film could handle that, but it couldn’t. I visited all of them in their respective homes. I wanted to see them outside of the tour. And then after that, I said, “You know, we’ve gotta keep on filming, because they’re going back into the studio.” They’re going to go back to record and I want to see that. So we did -- we waited and in 2010 that happened. So we filmed them at Fantasy [Studios] in Berkeley recording ‘ Eclipse ,’ their latest album.

Did the scope and direction of the project change at all during the course of making the film, from where you started out with outlining the project at the beginning?

Not really; you know, as a documentary filmmaker, you never know where it’s going to go. Arnel could have failed. It would still have been a film, but it would have been a very different film. I think the fact that he succeeded and [that] they gained new audiences and they gained this second life, it’s great storytelling for this Cinderella story. I thought it would be a Cinderella story, but I didn’t know if in actuality it would be that. I’d hoped for that, but you’re watching life unfold, so it’s very zen -- you just wait to see where it leads you.

It is a great story, because Journey is a band that certainly, they were already hugely popular, but it really has brought them a whole different audience in addition to their previous fan base. That’s really something after all of the years that this band has been together.

Yeah, it’s incredible, and you saw that actually happen in 2008. You saw this different audience coming on and I’m like, “Wow, this is incredible.” I think it took everyone by surprise. I think all of them took a leap of faith with Arnel, and Arnel took a leap of faith too, right? So there was this feeling of “Let’s see how it goes,” and it paid off for everyone.

The film is presented in a mixture of English and Filipino dialogue. How did that part develop?

I think that Arnel is more comfortable speaking in that manner and in the Philippines, a lot of people switch from Filipino to English. It’s just a matter of speaking. I realized that if I was going to get him to really articulate [about] say, the first time he performed in front of a crowd of 30,000 in Chile, I needed to liberate him from just speaking English and I understand the language, so that wasn’t a problem for me.

Were you a Journey fan?

Obviously, I grew up with their music, but I wasn’t a hardcore Journey fan. I mean, I’ve seen hardcore Journey fans [ laughs ]. I lived with them all throughout that summer. I thought they were a wonderful band and certainly loved their music, but I think that after this whole process, I have a newfound respect for what they’ve done. I’ve really understood what it is that they’ve done.

They created a catalog and not just one or two songs, but a catalog of music that’s timeless and works. Every night, it works. I saw it -- every night, ‘Separate Ways’ would come on and the entire [crowd of] 20,000 would [react] like it was the first time they were hearing it. And you know that they’ve heard it tens of hundreds of times. But you feel the energy, like it’s the first time. It’s amazing -- how did he do that? That’s magic. Not everyone can do that. So to me, it’s just pretty incredible what they’ve done.

As a filmmaker, had you seen the ‘ Frontiers and Beyond ’ documentary that they’d done in the ‘80s?

Yes -- I’d seen it in the process of research.

That really illustrates how that band did everything bigger than everybody else in that decade. It was shot by NFL Films and legendary NFL broadcaster John Facenda voiced it. How did that play into your psyche when you were working on this project? Did you think about that at all?

Oh, absolutely. You know, when you’re editing a film, you start out with a five-hour cut, right? So I did really want to cover the history. It was surprising to me to find out that they were the ones who started the [usage of] big monitors on stage, so that people in the nosebleeds would feel like it was still an intimate experience.

God, that’s really smart. Now of course, it’s a matter of course, right? Everyone does it. But the fact that they were the first ones, that they actually owned the company that did that, that rented it out . . . I was like, “Wow.” I wanted to at some point talk about that. It’s going to be in the DVD extras, obviously, but it just couldn’t be part of this film.The film couldn’t support it or really examine it in any kind of profound way.

But they did [pioneer that] and I had no idea. That was all new to me in that process of researching the band. It’s pretty incredible. And of course, then they got their reputation for being corporate rock, because they were so slick and got sponsors. Now everyone gets sponsors. Ross Valory actually told me a really funny story about how Mick Jagger came around and visited them in San Francisco, wanting to know how they did it and what they were doing business-wise.

There’s a moment in the film where you capture Chicago singer Jason Scheff [a replacement himself for original Chicago lead singer Peter Cetera] talking to Arnel backstage. That moment feels very spontaneous -- I don’t know how engineered that moment was or wasn’t . . .

No, it wasn’t at all!

You don’t necessarily know that is a singer from the band Chicago walking up to Arnel . . .

No, I didn’t. But someone, who I think was with Arnel, mentioned that Jason was backstage. I didn’t hear that -- we were just following Arnel. My cinematographer was on him and I said, “He’s our guy -- he’s our story -- follow him wherever,” and it just happened. That’s when the documentary is really golden, when those things happen and you don’t plan it.

You’ve acknowledged in the past your hesitation to do a project like this, because of what a bear of a task it is to clear popular music for a film. Can you talk about that part of working on this documentary?

Oh, my God. You know, I don’t know the details of it. Because you have music supervisors and it’s really all lawyers talking to lawyers. I knew it from other films, one piece of music appearing by Liza Minnelli and Donna Summer -- I knew even that piece of music was so difficult to clear. We cleared like 13 Journey songs, which is one of the most difficult catalogs to clear. But of course, they signed on to make the film, so I hate to say it was easy, but it was easier.

But it’s still very complicated, because at some point even if they want to, it’s beyond their control. It’s a whole lot of details that even I right now don’t completely understand. But I knew it would be difficult, just from making other films. Of course at the end of the day if we couldn’t clear it, it would have really been not good.

Watch the Trailer for 'Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey'

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Journey Recount Singer’s Wild Ride in ‘Don’t Stop Believin” Doc

By Steve Appleford

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It’s never been easy to replace the singer of a hugely popular rock band. After Steve Perry left Journey in 1998, the platinum-selling Bay Area act moved on with a series of vocalists to varying degrees of success, but it wasn’t until guitarist Neal Schon landed at an obscure video on YouTube late one night that he knew he’d found his man — in Manila.

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The voice singing Journey hits in the lo-fi video belonged to Arnel Pineda, a Filipino singer who grew up in poverty and sang in local cover bands with no expectations of rock stardom. All Schon knew was that the guy sounded just like Perry, and he soon had Pineda on a plane to San Francisco to audition for the gig in late 2007. Months later, Pineda made his debut as the band’s new singer in front of 20,000 fans at the Viña del Mar International Song Festival in Chile. “He’s a clutch hitter, this kid,” guitarist Jonathan Cain tells Rolling Stone . “He comes through.”

The story of Pineda’s dramatic first year in the band is told in the documentary Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey , which is set to air September 30th on the PBS series Independent Lens . Directed by Ramona Diaz, the film won raves at festival screenings last year and will be released August 20th on DVD and Blu-ray.

Pineda’s first year was a grueling trial for the singer, whose dream gig came with the physical challenge of international touring and the expectations of Journey fans as he ran through an FM radio hit parade of “Faithfully,” “Any Way You Want It” and “Who’s Crying Now.” He faced moments of loneliness, stage-fright and genuine racism, but still remains with the band after six years, and will be back on the road when Journey tours next year with the Steve Miller Band and Tower of Power.

He has yet to meet Perry, but knows what he’d say if that encounter ever happened, and without a hint of sarcasm: “Can I have your autograph?”

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In Los Angeles, Pineda, Schon, Cain and bassist Ross Valory spoke with Rolling Stone about the documentary and Journey’s new era as a truly international rock act.

The lead singer position is historically a very hard spot to fill. Neal Schon: There were guys being pitched to us — people in L.A. and New York that have been doing the classic rock thing for a long time — and I really was not moved by it. I was looking for some serious talent, somebody that we could move forward with — and have serious pipes and go in new directions with us as well as cover our old stuff very well. When I found Arnel, I went, “That’s the guy.” I’d never heard any singer cover that broad of a spectrum. He’ll do Nat King Cole for you right now, and you’ll go no way. Sing for him, Arnel. . .

Arnel Pineda: [ Singing ] Unforgettable, that’s what you are . . .

It seems like a crazy idea to find your singer that way from across the world. Schon: I didn’t think it was that crazy. Everybody was concerned that he was in Manila and does he speak English? I’d go, “I just watched 40 videos and he’s singing all songs that are in English. If he doesn’t speak good English, he can always learn.”

Jonathan Cain: Ironically, the Internet proved to be a friend. When Arrival first came out [in 2001], Napster stole the album. We spent a ton of money flying to New York making this record only to have it up there for fans to get it for free, so I hated the Internet. Then it comes around to serve us well in the future. It’s quite a tool and for us it was a blessing.

What was it like for you to suddenly be immersed in Journey’s world? Pineda: It was my world being turned upside down — but in a good way, a fantastic way. I’m still in disbelief. I’m in front of thousands of people singing all these songs that I listened to when I was 18 years old. Now I’m with the big boys and it’s such a blessing. It’s one in a million.

Schon: He brings it. He sings his heart out every night, and it’s not an easy menu. Our songs are so difficult to sing. It’s going on six years now and we’ve toured a lot.

What was it like as a new performer to be faced with all the pressure that comes with playing to large audiences? Pineda: I had to give up a lot of foods that I’m accustomed to eating: dairy products, beer, wine, spicy food. And no talking. I like talking. It’s become a luxury to last even through a 10-minute talk with you. I have to go back to my room and my silence — until the next gig happens.

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Was there another downside to having this all happen at once? Pineda: I get really homesick inside. I would miss my life with my wife.

Schon: In the very beginning, we threw him in the fire, no doubt about it. I remember we’re getting ready to go on in Viña del Mar and it’s sold out and it’s live to 25 million people all over South America. Arnel is like, two seconds before we go on: “Can I go home? I don’t want to go out.” It was fear and loathing to the max, but then he went out and he went for it and the audience went nuts.

How nervous were you? Pineda: I was terrified to death. It took years, but I survived it. I’m still here.

Other bands have tried to replace a popular singer with an unknown and failed. Cain: It is rare that the audience goes with you like that.

Schon: The good news is that when he came in, it was a breath of fresh air for all of us and every scenario that went with it. All of a sudden, instead of us being a band from the U.S.A., we became a worldwide band. We’re accepted worldwide everywhere we went with him in markets we were never accepted before. There’s always going to be the naysayers who cant live with anything but exactly what it was from the beginning. You can’t please everyone.

In the film, it shows that some of the early reactions were very negative, even racist. How did you deal with that? Pineda: I just didn’t bother to get intimidated with those words. I’m not trying to compete with Mr. Perry. I’m trying to help out here. I am so blessed to be in this position, to be the one to carry the legacy.

Cain: Back in ’98, when we started with Steve Augeri [as singer 1998-2006], I was worried about him getting shot. We took a lot of flack. We used to get hate mail. Somebody got my number and would call me: “You son of a bitch!” They were reading us the riot act because how dare us be Journey without Steve Perry?

Schon: It was vicious, man.

Pineda: This is the first time I’ve said this — my wife was so freaked out with all these racist comments that she told me to bring a bulletproof vest: “You might get shot there!”

Because of your history together, you must still have business with Steve Perry. Ross Valory: Steve has been really, really cooperative. He helped produce the greatest hits video. It’s unfortunate we don’t have a physical relationship with him.

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Schon: Working on it though. I have ultimate respect and love for the guy this many years later. I’m getting older, man, and you don’t want to hang onto all the stupid things that you do in your life. You start looking back and I’m cherishing all the good times that we had — and the first time I sat in a room with him and wrote “Patiently” in 10 minutes. The door’s always been open. Arnel’s even open. If he ever wanted to come onstage with us and do a song, we’d be like, “Come on!”

What was your reaction to the documentary? Pineda: I’m so happy that it’s out there. I think it’s going to give a tremendous amount of inspiration for all of these hopeless musicians out there — especially those we will never learn about how fantastic they are. Second, it’s like I’m not supposed to be there — I look at it and it’s an ill fit. But it’s how I look and how I was born, so I’m going to live with it. It’s my journey. I’m so grateful for what’s happened, and it’s still going strong.

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Journey's YouTube Lead Singer

Arnel Pineda, new lead singer of Journey, poses with other members of the band

Ever since lead singer Steve Perry injured his hip in 1996, legendary '80s rock band Journey hasn't been the same. Singers Steve Augeri and Jeff Scott Soto tried filling Perry's big shoes (and tight jeans), but the band's success never reached its previous heights and Journey was relegated to a feel-good nostalgia act.

Thirty-three years after its birth, Journey is getting a second wind from an unexpected place. In December, the band signed on new lead vocalist Arnel Pineda, a Filipino singer who they found leading a Manila cover band on YouTube. Six months later, the band has kicked off a tour of Europe and the U.S. and released Revelation , a new album featuring original songs and re-recorded classics that has already shot up to the fifth highest-selling album in the U.S. since its debut two weeks ago.

How Journey found Pineda is a Cinderella tale of the Internet era. After the band dismissed Soto last June for unspecified reasons, guitarist Neal Schon turned to the Web in search of talent. After two days of surfing on YouTube, he came upon clips of Pineda singing with his band, The Zoo, and nailing all the right notes in the toughest Survivor, Queen and Journey power ballads. "I heard his voice and my eyes got big," says Schon, who has been with Journey since its inception in 1975. "I thought, he can't be that good." Schon left his house, took a spin on his motorcycle to clear his head, and then contacted Pineda. At first, the singer thought the email was a hoax. "I didn't think the real Neal Schon would call a guy like me," says Pineda. "I'm just a guy from the Philippines." Four months later, Pineda signed on as Journey's new lead singer. "I've been waiting for this moment to come for 25 years," he says. "It's like shooting to the moon."

Born in Manila, Pineda, 40, started singing as a child, quickly learning his parents' favorite songs by The Jackson Five, Barbra Streisand and The Carpenters. His parents struggled to raise their four sons by running a corner shop and tailoring clothes. Pineda performed in local singing competitions until the age of 13, when his mother died from an extended illness. Medical bills had drained their savings, leaving the family homeless and living with relatives. Not wanting to burden his father, Pineda struck out on his own, collecting newspapers and bottles, and living on the street for nearly two years. When he was 15, a friend encouraged him to start singing again, beginning Pineda's 25-year career as a cover band singer in the Philippines and Hong Kong.

The first half of Pineda's story isn't unique — Filipino cover bands are ubiquitous in many Asian cities. It's a phenomenon Manila-based PhilMusic.com founder Jim Ayson attributes to an imbalance in supply and demand. "There are more musicians in the Philippines than there are opportunities," says Ayson, a drummer who knew Pineda in the 1980s. But Pineda's rags-to-riches story is giving new hope to Filipino singers. "A lot of singers here tried to make it in the States and they couldn't," he says. "[Pineda] made it."

Not surprisingly, Filipino media in the homeland and the U.S. have lit up with Pineda coverage. "Everyone's talking about it," says Marilyn Deleon, 44, a Filipino-American Journey fan in New York City who helped create animated videos of Pineda and other Journey members and posted them online. At Pineda's first U.S. performance with Journey in Las Vegas in March, Schon estimates Filipino Americans made up half of the audience. Some countrymen are already painting Pineda as a kind of national hero. "There's [boxer] Manny Pacquiao, [pool player] Efren Reyes and then there's Arnel," says Kookie Luib, a bass player who performed with Pineda during his years in Hong Kong. "Our country is always recognized for corruption and government malfunction. These guys are bringing up Filipino pride."

But not all of Journey's die-hard fans — and there are plenty — have embraced Pineda with open arms. When Nell, who did not want to reveal her real name, started an Arnel Pineda fan site in December, the Florida-based web developer says angry Journey fans left death threats on her answering machine. The band's traditional fanbase is mostly white and American, and some are upset that Pineda is neither. "Journey is supposed to be an all-American band," one fan wrote in an online forum.

But as more people hear Pineda's truly stunning voice, the number of critics is likely to be drowned out by a roar of support. And the number of online rock stars is sure to skyrocket. "If you want to get discovered, you don't need a demo anymore," says Ayson. "Everyone's putting their stuff on YouTube now." It's a reminder to all of us: don't stop believing.

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Steve Perry Walked Away From Journey. A Promise Finally Ended His Silence.

By Alex Pappademas

• Sept. 5, 2018

MALIBU, Calif. — On the back patio of a Greek restaurant, a white-haired man making his way to the exit paused for a second look at one of his fellow diners, a man with a prominent nose who wore his dark hair in a modest pompadour.

“You look a lot like Steve Perry,” the white-haired man said.

“I used to be Steve Perry,” Steve Perry said.

This is how it goes when you are Steve Perry. Everyone is excited to see you, and no one can quite believe it. Everyone wants to know where you’ve been.

In 1977, an ambitious but middlingly successful San Francisco jazz-rock band called Journey went looking for a new lead singer and found Mr. Perry, then a 28-year-old veteran of many unsigned bands. Mr. Perry and the band’s lead guitarist and co-founder, Neal Schon, began writing concise, uplifting hard rock songs that showcased Mr. Perry’s clean, powerful alto, as operatic an instrument as pop has ever seen. This new incarnation of Journey produced a string of hit singles, released eight multiplatinum albums and toured relentlessly — so relentlessly that in 1987, a road-worn Mr. Perry took a hiatus, effectively dissolving the band he’d helped make famous.

He did not disappear completely — there was a solo album in 1994, followed in 1996 by a Journey reunion album, “Trial by Fire.” But it wasn’t long before Mr. Perry walked away again, from Journey and from the spotlight. With his forthcoming album, “Traces,” due in early October, he’s breaking 20 years of radio silence.

Over the course of a long midafternoon lunch — well-done souvlaki, hold all the starches — Mr. Perry, now 69, explained why he left, and why he’s returned. He spoke of loving, and losing and opening himself to being loved again, including by people he’s never met, who know him only as a voice from the Top 40 past.

And when he detailed the personal tragedy that moved him to make music again, he talked about it in language as earnest and emotional as any Journey song:

“I thought I had a pretty good heart,” he said, “but a heart isn’t really complete until it’s completely broken.”

IN ITS ’80S heyday, Journey was a commercial powerhouse and a critical piñata. With Mr. Perry up front, slinging high notes like Frisbees into the stratosphere, Journey quickly became not just big but huge . When few public figures aside from Pac-Man and Donkey Kong had their own video game, Journey had two. The offices of the group’s management company received 600 pieces of Journey fan mail per day.

The group toured hard for nine years. Gradually, that punishing schedule began to take a toll on Journey’s lead singer.

“I never had any nodules or anything, and I never had polyps,” Mr. Perry said, referring to the state of his vocal cords. He looked around for some wood to knock, then settled for his own skull. The pain, he said, was more spiritual than physical.

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As a vocalist, Mr. Perry explained, “your instrument is you. It’s not just your throat, it’s you . If you’re burnt out, if you’re depressed, if you’re feeling weary and lost and paranoid, you’re a mess.”

“Frankly,” Mr. Schon said in a phone interview, “I don’t know how he lasted as long as he did without feeling burned out. He was so good, doing things that nobody else could do.”

On Feb. 1, 1987, Mr. Perry performed one last show with Journey, in Anchorage. Then he went home.

Mr. Perry was born in Hanford, Calif., in the San Joaquin Valley, about 45 minutes south of Fresno. His parents, who were both Portuguese immigrants, divorced when he was 8, and Mr. Perry and his mother moved in next door to her parents’. “I became invisible, emotionally,” Mr. Perry said. “And there were places I used to hide, to feel comfortable, to protect myself.”

Sometimes he’d crawl into a corner of his grandparents’ garage with a blanket and a flashlight. But he also found refuge in music. “I could get lost in these 45s that I had,” Mr. Perry said. “It turned on a passion for music in me that saved my life.”

As a teen, Mr. Perry moved to Lemoore, Calif., where he enjoyed an archetypally idyllic West Coast adolescence: “A lot of my writing, to this day, is based on my emotional attachment to Lemoore High School.”

There he discovered the Beatles and the Beach Boys, went on parked-car dates by the San Joaquin Valley’s many irrigation canals, and experienced a feeling of “freedom and teenage emotion and contact with the world” that he’s never forgotten. Even a song like “No Erasin’,” the buoyant lead single from his new LP has that down-by-the-old-canal spirit, Mr. Perry said.

And after he left Journey, it was Lemoore that Mr. Perry returned to, hoping to rediscover the person he’d been before subsuming his identity within an internationally famous rock band. In the beginning, he couldn’t even bear to listen to music on the radio: “A little PTSD, I think.”

Eventually, in 1994, he made that solo album, “For the Love of Strange Medicine,” and sported a windblown near-mullet and a dazed expression on the cover. The reviews were respectful, and the album wasn’t a flop. With alternative rock at its cultural peak, Mr. Perry was a man without a context — which suited him just fine.

“I was glad,” he said, “that I was just allowed to step back and go, O.K. — this is a good time to go ride my Harley.”

JOURNEY STAYED REUNITED after Mr. Perry left for the second time in 1997. Since December 2007, its frontman has been Arnel Pineda, a former cover-band vocalist from Manila, Philippines, who Mr. Schon discovered via YouTube . When Journey was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last April, Mr. Pineda sang the 1981 anthem “Don’t Stop Believin’,” not Mr. Perry. “I’m not in the band,” he said flatly, adding, “It’s Arnel’s gig — singers have to stick together.”

Around the time Mr. Pineda joined the band, something strange had happened — after being radioactively unhip for decades, Journey had crept back into the zeitgeist. David Chase used “Don’t Stop Believin’” to nerve-racking effect in the last scene of the 2007 series finale of “The Sopranos” ; when Mr. Perry refused to sign off on the show’s use of the song until he was told how it would be used, he briefly became one of the few people in America who knew in advance how the show ended.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” became a kind of pop standard, covered by everyone from the cast of “Glee” to the avant-shred guitarist Marnie Stern . Decades after they’d gone their separate ways, Journey and Mr. Perry found themselves discovering fans they never knew they had.

Mark Oliver Everett, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter who performs with his band Eels under the stage name E, was not one of them, at first.

“When I was young, living in Virginia,” Mr. Everett said, “Journey was always on the radio, and I wasn’t into it.”

So although Mr. Perry became a regular at Eels shows beginning around 2003, it took Mr. Everett five years to invite him backstage. He’d become acquainted with Patty Jenkins, the film director, who’d befriended Mr. Perry after contacting him for permission to use “Don’t Stop Believin’” in her 2003 film “Monster.” (“When he literally showed up on the mixing stage the next day and pulled up a chair next to me, saying, ‘Hey I really love your movie. How can I help you?’ it was the beginning of one of the greatest friendships of my life,” Ms. Jenkins wrote in an email.) Over lunch, Ms. Jenkins lobbied Mr. Everett to meet Mr. Perry.

They hit it off immediately. “At that time,” Mr. Everett said, “we had a very serious Eels croquet game in my backyard every Sunday.” He invited Mr. Perry to attend that week. Before long, Mr. Perry began showing up — uninvited and unannounced, but not unwelcome — at Eels rehearsals.

“They’d always bust my chops,” Mr. Perry said. “Like, ‘Well? Is this the year you come on and sing a couple songs with us?’”

At one point, the Eels guitarist Jeff Lyster managed to bait Mr. Perry into singing Journey’s “Lights” at one of these rehearsals, which Mr. Everett remembers as “this great moment — a guy who’s become like Howard Hughes, and just walked away from it all 25 years ago, and he’s finally doing it again.”

Eventually Mr. Perry decided to sing a few numbers at an Eels show, which would be his first public performance in decades. He made this decision known to the band, Mr. Everett said, not via phone or email but by showing up to tour rehearsals one day carrying his own microphone. “He moves in mysterious ways,” Mr. Everett observed.

For mysterious Steve Perry reasons, Mr. Perry chose to make his long-awaited return to the stage at a 2014 Eels show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minn. During a surprise encore, he sang three songs, including one of his favorite Eels tunes, whose profane title is rendered on an edited album as “It’s a Monstertrucker.”

“I walked out with no anticipation and they knew me and they responded, and it was really a thrill,” Mr. Perry said. “I missed it so much. I couldn’t believe it’d been so long.”

“It’s a Monstertrucker” is a spare song about struggling to get through a lonely Sunday in someone’s absence. For Mr. Perry, it was not an out-of-nowhere choice.

In 2011, Ms. Jenkins directed one segment of “Five,” a Lifetime anthology film about women and breast cancer. Mr. Perry visited her one day in the cutting room while she was at work on a scene featuring real cancer patients as extras. A woman named Kellie Nash caught Mr. Perry’s eye. Instantly smitten, he asked Ms. Jenkins if she would introduce them by email.

“And she says ‘O.K., I’ll send the email,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “but there’s one thing I should tell you first. She was in remission, but it came back, and it’s in her bones and her lungs. She’s fighting for her life.”

“My head said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Mr. Perry remembered, “but my heart said, ‘Send the email.’”

“That was extremely unlike Steve, as he is just not that guy,” Ms. Jenkins said. “I have never seen him hit on, or even show interest in anyone before. He was always so conservative about opening up to anyone.”

A few weeks later, Ms. Nash and Mr. Perry connected by phone and ended up talking for nearly five hours. Their friendship soon blossomed into romance. Mr. Perry described Ms. Nash as the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

“I was loved by a lot of people, but I didn’t really feel it as much as I did when Kellie said it,” he said. “Because she’s got better things to do than waste her time with those words.”

They were together for a year and a half. They made each other laugh and talked each other to sleep at night.

In the fall of 2012, Ms. Nash began experiencing headaches. An MRI revealed that the cancer had spread to her brain. One night not long afterward, Ms. Nash asked Mr. Perry to make her a promise.

“She said, ‘If something were to happen to me, promise me you won’t go back into isolation,’ ” Mr. Perry said, “because that would make this all for naught.”

At this point in the story, Mr. Perry asked for a moment and began to cry.

Ms. Nash died on Dec. 14, 2012, at 40. Two years later, Mr. Perry showed up to Eels rehearsal with his own microphone, ready to make good on a promise.

TIME HAS ADDED a husky edge to Mr. Perry’s angelic voice; on “Traces,” he hits some trembling high notes that bring to mind the otherworldly jazz countertenor “Little” Jimmy Scott. The tone suits the songs, which occasionally rock, but mostly feel close to their origins as solo demos Mr. Perry cut with only loops and click tracks backing him up.

The idea that the album might kick-start a comeback for Mr. Perry is one that its maker inevitably has to hem and haw about.

“I don’t even know if ‘coming back’ is a good word,” he said. “I’m in touch with the honest emotion, the love of the music I’ve just made. And all the neurosis that used to come with it, too. All the fears and joys. I had to put my arms around all of it. And walking back into it has been an experience, of all of the above.”

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Journey lead singer Arnel Pineda in a public feud with other band members

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Filipino American frontman Arnel Pineda of the popular rock group Journey is at the center of controversy over a possible reunion of some band members.

The Music Times reports the bickering began when guitarist and vocalist Neal Schon suggested that founding band member and lead vocalist Greg Rolie return for the 50th-anniversary tour.

That plan was nixed, but when Schon’s wife Michaele publicly commented on social media that two Journey band members vetoed the idea, Pineda became irritated, Bravewords reported .

Some fans immediately blamed Jonathan Cain and Pineda for blocking Rolie’s return.

“You people are unbelievable…whoever’s spreading rumor about me regarding the #GregRollie issue are maliciously ignorant..im not gonna stoop down to your level,” said the vocalist at the time,” Pineda wrote.

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He then went further, suggesting the band could get rid of him if they didn’t like him.

“If some of them are tired of me being with them, with all means, they can fire me anytime,” he wrote defiantly.”

m with the band to sing the legacy..if some of them are tired of me being with them,with all means,they can fire me anytime.. and don’t lecture me about spiritual BS.. #walkthetalk — Arnel Pineda (@arnelpineda) February 4, 2023

That’s when former Journey frontman Jeff Scott Soto chimed in.

Classic Rock 96.1 reported Soto wrote

“You have NOTHING or NO ONE to answer to brother, you’re a kind, gentle and huge heart with a huge talent to match, it’s the age-old crap when you achieve success and happiness, there are many who want to break you down! Stay the course, YOUR course, I’m proud to be your friend,” said the vocalist.

AsAmNews is published by the non-profit, Asian American Media Inc.  Follow us on  Facebook ,  X, Instagram ,  TikTok  and  YouTube . Please consider  making a tax-deductible donation  to support our efforts to produce diverse content about the AAPI communities. We are supported in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the  California State Library  in partnership with the  California Department of Social Services  and the  California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs  as part of the  Stop the Hate  program. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to  CA vs Hate .

29 COMMENTS

Without Pineda Journey would have been lost and forgotten long time ago. I like Pineda because he is the Best Singer, and because he is from philippines. He gives 100percent on stage and keeps the Journey alive.

Obviously you have not heard the drummer sing.

Why then that the drummer is not the vocalist?

I think Pineda and Rollie would be awesome together it would bring back the old days sound

It seems to me that their is constant strife and bickering going on in this band. And it’s usually centered around Neal and wife. Maybe nonstop touring isn’t the answer.

Actually caused by Cain and his wife and their worship of trump…Morons

Tell us you are a liberal bitch without telling us.

No body was Journey but Greg rolled and Steve perry that’s the journey I loved and remember

There’s only one true lead singer of journey and everyone knows who it is and it’s not Pineda. He makes them a tribute band

It may not b pleasant 4 them, but it would b a tragic loss 2 us fans😏Legacy music must b preserved and the best way 2 do that is enjoy it live🤩

Steve perry journey best vocalist

I think they need put Pineda and rollie together for a good tour for the 50th anniversary tour that would be awesome and would love to go seen journey 6 years ago and rasco flats best concerts I seen in awhile right before my heart Attack so would love to go again soon that was in St Louis thanks

This entire mess is totally ridiculous ignorant, childish, immature, and completely unnecessary. Journey has always been an awesome band, but let’s face it without Arnel Pineda they would not have continued on for this long successfully. That’s my opinion and I believe I’m right I think he is a monumental talent And a shining example of integrity in a human being, compassionate, caring, and truly devoted to keeping journey at the forefront. Without him, I do not believe it could have been accomplished certainly not on this level for this continued amount of time. Why can’t people just grow up and acknowledge his contribution. I’m not saying the other artists are not equally as contributing and talented. It takes all of them together to create this band. It’s not just one individual, but without each one of these talents, combined together, they would not be the band journey and that’s reality. All this other nonsense really just has no place even being validated by exposure. I have been listening to this band since they first came out when I was a teenager in high school, so I think I’m qualified to to deliver an educated opinion as well as being correct .

You’ll probably never find another singer like him.you all need to settle your differences and keep rocking for all us fans..stay safe everyone

Arnel has given the band 15 years of extra life.. made them all $Millions.. and brought endless new fans to fill stadiums all around the world. “Discovering” him was the best thing that happened for him AND Journey.. so please stop all this hate and bickering towards one of the nicest Human beings you could ever wish to meet.. I know this for a fact as I knew AP long before Journey came knocking on his door. The vile and malicious tweets need to stop..NOW.

I personally like Schons’s “Journey Through Time Band” it had Gregg Rollie in it who does great dual vocals and leads. Plus you had Deen Castronova who is in my opinion a much better Steve Perry clone than Arnel. What’s even more amazing is that Deen does this all while playing drums! Don’t believe me? https://youtu.be/B_DZ4aBt4Eo

Dean is awesome!

This is why Steve Perry left the band to much bickering Steve Perry was journey can’t be replaced

Really. No one cares. Washed up has-beens that weren’t that special to begin with.

STEVE PERRY..is Journey. Sorry

Steve can’t sing the songs anymore. That’s the main reason he kept turning down invitations to come back. Arnold even told him he would step down. No way he can possibly sing those songs. He doesn’t have the voice anymore. He has to sing softer music without all the highs. So without him Arnel is the only one that can sing them and can sing even higher notes if needed but he tries to keep everything as original as possible without Steve. In my opinion much better Singer but I also understand that the original singer is always the sound of the band. I don’t like AC/DC anymore. Bon Scott is AC/ DC no matter how well the band is doing now. And all the other bands. But something about Arnel makes me feel different. And he has been with the band longer than Steve or anyone else. A lot of this is my opinion. The rest is truth.

Steve Perry was smart to leave Journey, he made the best choice ever. I do understand the reason Steve left, it was all the childish drama he saw and in a old Interview Steve say’s it was not up to Neil or Jon to Force him into his Hip Replacement Surgery, it is and was A big desision for Steve. However so glad Steve is no longer part of this Drama. And yes all member’s should call it by Retiring 50 Year’s it is A long run. Little Foot Note NO ONE COULD HAVE EVER REPLACED THE VOICE. àka Steve Perry he was Journey, Bless Him.

No Arnel and Journey would be playing at the Armada Room’s Disco Swing Party at the Holiday Inn.

Only Steve Perry for me his the voice of all time💚

Dear Mr. Pineda: Thank you for your exceptional musical talent as Journey’s lead vocalist and representation of the Philippines. Sadly, you are witnessing first-hand the effects of Rock Star narcissism, greed and self-absorbed egomania. You fill Steve Perry’s shoes nicely and I appreciate your contributions as a contributing songwriter on the Freedom album. The dysfunction that exists in the band is the result of decades of ‘It’s All About ME!!!” by others and there is nothing you can do for those people; take care of yourself, get some counseling for a healthier perspective and don’t let anyone talk BS to you, mate. Cheers.

Without the brilliant and unmistakable sound of one Steve Perry, Journey is now merely a cover band. If you think I’m wrong next time while out In public and you hear a Journey song such as “Don’t stop believing” listen to who the voice singing it is. It is Steve Perry. Like in any juke box or even the song playing at the horrible series ending of the show The Sopranos. Steve Perry is thee sound of Journey not just some times but FAITHFULLY!

Neal’s wife needs to keep her nose and mouth out of the bands business. Does Neal have to have his wife fight his battles? Let the band members make the decisions ! If two members say no, than let the decision stand ! Hey Neal, ask your wife if she would she can replace your lead singer if you piss him off enough? Grow up, do what you do best, make music!

Steve Perry was the hit-maker. He was the force that drove Neil’s cool Santana-esque project into a multi-million dollar music machine. Steve Perry’s Songwriting (or co-writing) contributions include: Don’t Stop Believin’ Any Way You Want It Faithfully Open Arms Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’ Lights Oh Sherrie Send Her My Love Walks Like a Lady Who’s Crying Now Stay Awhile Without these epic hits, a Journey concert would be_________________.

I can’t even believe what I’m hearing. So many of you summed it up: Journey was an incredible band in the 80’s and then they were lost forever; you never heard about them……until Arnel showed up. I took my wife to see them in Hawaii with the construction worker. Horrendous. Arnel brought them back to life. Stop whining

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Remarkable story of how japanese am preserved their history, uncle samsik is seduced by power, but will the show seduce you, don b lee, nyc chinatown activist & board chair dies, family calls for full investigation of police shooting in la, regular features, ’the other ones’ wonder what makes you who you are, asamnews to begin 8 city lost kinjo tour in california, wayne’s world: if it’s not one thing, it’s always another.

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How Guy Fieri Dropped 30 Pounds While Still Eating Whatever He Wants

He looks good 👀

Fieri revealed his slimmed down bod to Men's Health and opened up about his wellness routine, which includes rucking, high-intensity interval training, and a daily cold plunge.

"Unfortunately, in the [ Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives ] world, people like to go, 'Oh, you’re the chef that eats the deep-fried pizza burgers with the ice cream toppings and all those huge, fried everythings.' My response is, 'I don’t want to say that you don’t know what you’re talking about. But you don’t know what you’re talking about,'" Fieri told the outlet.

The DDD host's health kick, which has since turned into a total lifestyle change, started back in 2020 during lockdown. He hired trainer Scott Butler, who started Fieri (and his entire family and crew) on station-centric workouts like squats, overhead presses, med-ball slams, battle ropes, and burpees. Fieri also took up rucking, which is a military-inspired workout that involves walking while carrying a backpack of weights (a.k.a a ruck sack) or a weighted vest. He typically opts for the latter for hiking the hills around his California home.

However, it was actually his eating habits that "changed the whole thing."

"That’s when we started talking about intermittent fasting," he said. "Once I started getting more serious about that, the quantity of food I was eating, and exercise, it really changed the whole thing."

He began skipping breakfast altogether and sticking to a 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. eating window. "It wasn't as gnarly as you might think," Fieri revealed. "I'm not a big breakfast fan."

"I still eat what I want to eat. But I just don’t eat as much of it," he added, while explaining that even includes shoot days. He takes just a couple bites of each dish on camera and then skips dinner afterward.

Fans are taking notice too—and flooding his comment section with compliments.

"He is 🔥 love how good he looks," one user wrote.

"Admiration from me!!!!" another added.

"Diners Drive-Ins and Deadlifts," a third fan joked.

Pop off, Guy!

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Tito Mel's Filipino Food

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18043 Jefferson Davis Hwy

Ruther Glen, VA 22546

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Wow just honestly impressed with this place. Best Filipino spot I ever seen. Look at this spread!! Chicken lumpia, pork empanada, LECHON, pork sisig, Bicol express (pork stew and shrimp in coconut juice), pork spare ribs, palabok, pandan drink, mango jelly dessert One of the best meals of my life thanks to Tito Mel's, Carla, and her husband for running the show! Highly recommend!

See all photos from Phong T. for Tito Mel's Filipino Food

Me and my family love Tito Mel's! The food is always good! Everyone there is so friendly!

A variety of items from Tito Mel's from one of our trips!

The best thing I like about this place is that you can sample the dish before you buy. No waste. We all have different tastes. It ticlkles me to think: what if the place is named "Tikim"? I wish the owners huge successes to come! Thank you for this beautiful attempt at making delicious and authentic Filipiino food available. It's always worth the 45 minute drive from where I live. See you soon.

It's so hard to find Filipino food in Virginia. So I was delighted when I found Tito Mel's. The food is great with a large variety of classic Filipino dishes. The only thing better than the food was the service. They took the time to rank to me about the food offered multiple samples to let me try dishes I had never had before. I will be back and often .

Don't leave any negative reviews here because you'll get harassed online by these folks Also, the food is horrible nobody here knows how to cook! It's never open always closed. So sad.

Well well well.... Look who made it to the woods! I'm impressed! I have been a chef (not a cook) for 25 years all over the world opening restaurants, and the first things I notice when I go into a restaurant is cleanliness and organization. I give you five stars! greeted with smiles and knowledge from the minute you enter the door, you can't help but to see all labels facing out with products very meticulously placed labeled and dated. Ntm the floors you could eat off of and lighting strong enough to see this place from 3 blocks away. Now for the food, I ordered a bit of everything on the menu for just myself price $120. When I say I spent $120 I had enough food for a week. 4 large desserts, 4 large entrees, a bag of chips, large bag of fresh bread (12 heavy cheese rolls) 12 count lumpia with fresh sauces for every dish 4 pints of white rice and one honeydew jelly drink. I would love to tell you about every item but it's unnecessary. Everything was fantastic and done very traditionally. Lumpia was super stuffed and hand prepared, but what really blew my mind was the flavor profile of the pork sisig (pork belly with chilies and liver paste) please for the love of god try this dish don't be scared because it says liver! This dish is delicate and warming with strong bold umami explosions from the pork belly. Perfect Desserts are fresh made and insanely mouth watering! I will need this at least once a week Food 5 stars Speed 5 stars Food temps 5 stars Round 1 5 stars And last but not least I had noticed the guy Casey (who wrote the review prior to mine) was clearly not too knowledgeable about this specific style cuisine or how much food costs these days (must be nice) or how hard it is to launch a new restaurant of this style in a demographic like Caroline county or how a review with 2 stars is a serious hit for hand made high quality cuisine at a price point that is very competitive. Save your negativity for Mcdonalds.....(oh ya menu(e) isn't spelled with an e!)

Clean restaurant

Great eponadadas the crust is fresh and hand made and filings taste sweat with a little bite,, also the curry chicken with regular white rice is good.

Excellent customer service! Food is consistently good and they are so nice to let you sample before you buy. We always go with the Lechon (Pork Belly). We tried the pineapple chicken for the first time and it's one of my new favorites! The other pork dish (I forgot the name) was also tasty.The restaurant is very clean. They are a great addition to Ruther Glen.

Pineapple chicken and pork with adobo rice

Good food for sure! Would recommend their chicken curry it is so good! Something new for the local area... taste fresh

Amazing food. Amazing service. The first time I went, they let me sample anything I wanted to make sure I got the perfect combo. I will be a regular at this place.

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Air Force 1 x Tiffany & Co.

Air Force 1 เป็นที่รู้จักครั้งแรกในปี 1982 และสร้างนิยามใหม่ให้รองเท้าบาสเก็ตบอลตั้งแต่คอร์ทพื้นไม้ไปจนถึงพื้นคอนกรีต แถมยังเป็นสนีกเกอร์บาสเก็ตบอลคู่แรกที่ใช้ Nike Air แต่ความล้ำนวัตกรรมก็ยังต้องหลีกทางให้ความเป็นไอคอนในแนวสตรีทของรุ่นนี้