Little Kampirada

In my early Bangkok days, I was often walking around with my long hair and a laptop, doing live visuals for local bands in small bars and venues. It was at one of those nights at Cosmic Cafe that I first spoke with Little. She was a music teacher at the time, helping a friend organise the event and slowly finding her way into a scene that would eventually shape her own musical life.

Fifteen years later, while planning a trip to Khon Kaen, one of my former students suggested her name. It took me a little while to connect the dots, and a few days later I was sitting with a coffee at Columbo Craft Village, waiting for her to arrive. In this green, lush and cosy pocket near Khon Kaen University, Little had opened Little Miss Something, a small shop filled with crochet and handmade objects. It felt a world away from the Bangkok nightlife where I remembered her.

COVID-19 became a turning point. When live performances stopped, she returned to Khon Kaen with her partner to catch her breath, and what began as a pause gradually became a different way of living. For the first time in years, she had time to slow down, set up a small recording studio at home, grow vegetables and make things with her hands. A stray cat came to give birth at the house too. She and her partner now share their home with ten cats.

Crochet, something her mother had taught her as a child, became part of this new rhythm and eventually another way of sustaining herself. What had always existed alongside music slowly took up more space in her everyday life.

As she walked me through the shop, she led me to a small room at the back. Tucked away behind the crochet and handmade objects was a piano. Sitting on her stool, Little told me that making music with Two Pills After Meal, the duo she formed with Ohm, remains the part of her creative life that represents her most completely. She still travels between Khon Kaen and Bangkok for performances, but now music seems to live alongside everything else. And in that quiet room at the back of the shop, the piano is always there.