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Published on August 2, 2007

Ever since I was 12 I knew I wanted to play music, but now that I'm 37, I'm lost!" says Kamol "Sukie" Sukosol Clapp. He's laughing, but the man who co-founded indie record label Bakery with three pals when he was just 22 really is kind of stuck.

Bakery became wildly popular, charting with the likes of Modern Dog, Joey Boy, Pause and Yokee Playboy, but after 10 years, the sheer business of being a business executive sapped Kamol's passion for music. He and his friends kissed Bakery goodbye in 2004.

"It grew too quickly, and I was thrown into the job of running the company. That wasn't the reason I got into it," he says. "I became someone I didn't want to be."

The other problem was that, a quarter-century after he first picked up a guitar, "I don't have the urge - it's just not that exciting anymore."

Clearly he has to find something different.

Read all about it in Kamol's new book, "Bakery & I". It's not a lament - in fact he hopes it will inspire people to follow their dreams. And it's got a happy ending: Kamol becomes the producer of "Dreamchaser", a show on TITV that's precisely about what he thinks people should do. The show lets him roam the country on a motorcycle, tracking down those who pursue dreams and catch them.

He got started on this one day when he just went with the flow, bought a bike and drove to Phuket, a place he'd never seen before.

"I needed to clear my brain," he says. "Travelling is very therapeutic. Once you get yourself out of your normal routine, you get another perspective."

Currently planning a second series for next year - and on moving to Khao Yai National Park - Kamol says that life is about finding out what you like and what you want to do - and about heeding your responsibilities.

His responsibility lies just ahead: Although he knows nothing about property, one day he'll have to take charge of his mother Kamala Sukosol Clapp's business, the Siam City Hotel, as well as other family properties.

In the meantime, though, he's got a motorcycle to ride.

"Motorcycles have a subculture in Thailand. It's underground, but once you get to know these people it's - wow! - like another world," Kamol says. He's not hard-wired to bikes, but touring the land on two wheels has let him get on with passion and let all thought of business slide for a while.

Kamol is ostensibly just another rich kid, but he's inherited some gumption too. His uncle, a piano distributor, founded the Kamol recording studio and pioneered foreign CD imports through a deal with Capital Records. The nephew has taken that savvy, his mother's intensity and motored on from there.

 "I don't play around when I do a TV show, I put my whole effort in it," he says. "Whatever I do, I do the best I can with it."

He did the best he could with a guitar, but realised that being a guitar hero was a dream beyond his reach, so he worked in music behind the scenes instead.

"There's a line between trying hard and knowing your limit. When we were kids my brother [Noi, who enjoyed great success with the band Pru] had more talent than I did, but I always tried harder, so I won."

Living in a national forest suggests that Kamol is no longer trying so hard. (Some of his friends just think he's in the throes of a midlife crisis.)

"Before it was about proving to yourself that you can do it," he says. "If fame came along with it, great. But now I'm just trying to balance myself, trying to be content."

Lisnaree Vichitsorasatra

The Nation