The year was 2002.
We could have easily missed this. We only found out because we overheard the school staff coordinating the venue setup during breaktime – for a special guest, Sir Joey Ayala at ang Bagong Lumad.
My ears perked up. Hindi Karaniwang Tao ito.
So yes, we found out Joey Ayala and his band were performing at the grade school auditorium on what would have been a very regular school day. For a group of college kids who had spent hours listening to songs from Awit ng mga Tanod-Lupa and Lumad sa syudad cassette tapes, this was a massive deal. It was an opportunity so rare that cutting class was not only necessary, it was absolutely justified.
We snuck into the auditorium and stealthily occupied a row right behind the gradeschoolers, trying our best to blend in so we wouldn’t distract the kids (we also had to suppress our screams). To our surprise, Cynthia Alexander was up there too, and I nearly lost it. She wasn’t even playing her own songs, but seeing the goddess behind Insomnia and Other Lullabies, and Rippingyarns live, a few feet away, was enough to make my inner fangirl short-circuit.
We sat there completely transfixed. This wasn’t just Joey Ayala, this was a full lineup of people from bands whose albums we already had in rotation.
When the set ended and the younger kids filtered out, our nerves kicked in. Fidgeting with anticipation, we made a beeline for the backstage area. Thankfully, I had our instruments stashed in my car, so we brought them along.
The Backstage Joke
When we approached them, Joey Ayala looked at us and remarked, “Wow, may instruments. Tumutugtog kayo?”
“May band po kami, Butong Pakwan… ” – i don’t know which one of us volunteered this information. Cool po kasi kami. (Truth is, we were a bunch of college girls who liked to make music together, and the name ‘Butong Pakwan’ was a placeholder, until we could come up with something better…)
“Butong Pakwan? Wow, baka next time ako naman manonood sa inyo,” Joey Ayala chuckled as he signed our rainstick.
We laughed along because the gesture was pure kindness; the absolute absurdity of us playing for a real audience was a joke in itself. He didn’t need to know that our “concert venues” consisted entirely of deserted school hallways and empty rooms.
Our First Real Gig
Months passed. We kept jamming, eventually growing our campus audience to a grand total of maybe ten people. But somehow, someone heard us, liked our sound, and passed our name along. That word-of-mouth chain landed us an actual intermission number at a cultural inter-school event – our very first official gig.
To make things even more surreal, Noel Cabangon was the guest artist. We were huge fans of Kanlungan and Tatsulok, and suddenly, there he was, performing live just a few feet away from us. Naturally, a photo op was mandatory.
The Band That Grew
From a placeholder name that stuck, Butong Pakwan’s journey had gone farther than we ever planned on. What started as random jam sessions in an all-girls college, continued post graduation with a new crew who brought real weight, depth, and musicality to the sound. These guys were genuinely talented, and just got it: the same pull toward social causes, the same reasons we started playing in the first place. (more kwentong BP in Confessions of an Indie Musician in the 2000s!)
As it turned out, our new bandmates were massive Joey Ayala fans, too.
What happened next felt like the universe had been waiting for the right moment to throw us a reverse card.
The Joke Wasn’t a Joke
We got booked for an event at the Quezon City Circle, and right there on the lineup with us was the legendary Joey Ayala himself.
I have no idea if he remembered a bunch of starstruck college kids and their autographed rainstick. But for a few minutes, we were “artists” on the same stage – sharing a bill with the guy whose cassette tapes we’d worn thin. We rushed to snap a photo before anyone could tell us we didn’t belong there.
We never became stadium-filling rockstars or even got any FM radio playtime. But for a bunch of college kids who started out playing to the echoes of empty school hallways, sharing the lineup with our hero was the best punchline to a joke that took two years to land.
