The question of whether Journey could really survive as a rock band arose for keyboardist Jonathan Cain in 1998.

That was the year one of rock’s biggest bands was going to go on without arguably its most recognized member, lead singer Steve Perry.

“We knew it was going to be a process,” Cain said. “We weren’t getting a free ride, and we had to build our brand back up. We had to be persistent and think things were going to turn around.”

But the good news came when Journey performed at the Palace of Auburn Hills, a sports arena just outside Detroit. The show was sold out, and the group – especially its three holdovers from its heyday, Cain, guitarist Neal Schon and bassist Ross Valory — took it as a good sign.

“We had the odds against us for a while there, but we played the Palace,” Cain said. “When I saw that we could fill the Palace, we had a good feeling.”

Things have gone pretty nicely for Journey – who’ll be performing at Cruzan Amphitheatre with fellow ‘80s rock icons Pat Benetar and Loverboy on Saturday night — since then.

The band’s signature song, Don’t Stop Believin’, gained new life thanks to TV shows like The Sopranos – where it played a huge role in the series finale – and Glee – where it played a huge role in the series debut. And after seeing some success with Perry’s original replacement, Steve Augeri, the group became the center of a remarkable story when it began working with singer Arnel Pineda from the Philippines.

Pineda, who came to the attention of Schon when Schon saw him perform on YouTube with his Journey cover band The Zoo, is now the subject of a documentary, Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey. The film, which made its premiere at the 2012 TriBeCa Film Festival in New York, was made by fellow Filipino Ramona Diaz and details Pineda’s life from his days on the streets in the Philippines to singing in front of thousands in Manila.

“We did have to get used to her filming us,” Cain said. “She was at rehearsals, right at the beginnings of Arnel’s work with Journey, and she went on the road. She got a minivan and chased after our bus. This went on for three or four years. She was very persistent – I think she had a vision for what was happening, and it took a fellow countryman to tell the story the way she did. And Arnel’s fabulous in it.”

In fact, Pineda’s presence has been the juice behind Journey’s continued resurgence, Cain said. The band has released two albums of new material — Revelation and Eclipse — since Pineda’s been on board. Cain said the new stuff put a lot of doubts to rest, especially when they saw singles like Anything Is Possible get airplay: “People didn’t think a new Journey song was ever going to get on the radio.”

And Pineda’s story only adds to the story behind the song Don’t Stop Believin’, which Cain wrote with Perry and Schon in 1980. Cain said the song was borne of his own experiences coming out to Los Angeles in the 1970s, when rock clubs dominated the Sunset Strip.

“When we created the song, it wasn’t that big a hit,” Cain said. “It has a rock ‘n’ roll hope to it, and innocence comes to mind. It was a look into a world I wanted to be a part of. I wanted to put it all in a song.”

Cain said the idea of the song seemed to come full circle when he found out that it had been picked as part of the 1980s jukebox musical Rock of Ages, which is about the Los Angeles rock scene.

“It was eye-opening, there was that cruising thing going on, with people being in their cars,” Cain said. “And people would be walking around out there. And there’d be Elton John at the Troubadour and the Rocky Horror Show at the Roxy. All these amazing live bands would come down and it’d be accessible to us.”

These days, not only are Cain and Journey relating the tale of music dreams every night on tour, but Cain is seeing another musical dream take flight from a different angle. His daughter, Madison Cain, is aiming to get a career in country music going, with her song Dirt getting a lot of views on YouTube.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “She’s done it the hard way. She could’ve done American Idol, or done the Disney route. But in the end she chose the hard way to do it, the singer-songwriter way. For me, it’s great. I just know her dedication – she was looking for a little more gratification, but even when it wasn’t happening right away, she accepted it and continued to work.

“I told her about all those things I mentioned. I had glimpses of what success might feel like, but I was denied until I was 28, which is where Don’t Stop Believin’ comes from.”