"I salute Vic del Rosario for his music savvy," says Valera of the record and movie mogul who discovered him. "He knows what makes a hit, what doesn't. Alam n'ya ang diskarte." 

Valera, however, traces his roots back to Electric Hair, "a never-heard rock band" where he was the vocalist and bass player for seven years. But after one Japan gig with the band, Valera quit and unlocked his baul of original songs. 

"I actually had three songs hidden then," Valera recalls, "but they were for the choir in church." 

He didn't know how to read or write notes, he admits, and it took a lot of guts for him to submit the first song he had written for then 12-year-old Sharon Cuneta. The song, "Mr. DJ," which evoked the pining of a teeny bopper in love for the first time, was a colossal hit for both the singer and the songwriter. 

Even at the height of his popularity, Valera was never into big money, he claims. 

"I got paid fried chicken and buko juice for one show," he says. 

The money, however, hasn't stopped rolling in. Most of his songs have been acquired by ABS-CBN as theme songs for its teleseryes. 

"I think I'm more popular now than I was before," he says with candor. "Yung iba kong kantang hindi nag-hit, nire-revive tapos, sumisikat ngayon." 

He couldn't ask for more, and he doesn't want anything more, not even to become a rock star, even if he can do a mean falsetto like Queen's late Freddie Mercury did. All Valera wants to do is plant kamoteng kahoy.