Week One: The Big Push, Brixton, and My First Steps into Brighton

Last updated: June 2, 2026

It had been over 20 years since I last set foot in the UK. Twenty years. And yet the moment I landed at Heathrow, something familiar clicked back into place. I had fond memories of London from years ago, and now I was back, but this time with a very specific mission: to see Ren and The Big Push.

What started as two shows I was originally planning to attend quickly became four. By the time the UK leg was done, I’d been to Brixton, Bristol, Brighton, and Manchester. But I’ll start at the beginning.

Arriving in London

My flight landed about two hours ahead of the friends I was meeting, people I’d connected with through the Ren fan community, first at New York Fashion Week when Ren walked the runway, then again at the Knox Hill and Victus tour show in Washington DC. These weren’t just concert friends. They were people I chatted with regularly, people who understood exactly why flying across the Atlantic to see this band made complete sense.

Since I couldn’t check into the Airbnb until 3 PM and it was barely 10:30 AM, I did the sensible thing: found a decent latte in the Heathrow terminal, settled into a chair, and let myself decompress from the transatlantic flight. When my friends finally arrived, we jumped on the London Tube and headed to the flat, where another friend was already on her way. She’d been traveling down from York, making her way south to meet us for the show. Seeing everyone in the same room, buzzing with anticipation, was its own kind of electric.

The O2 Priority Line Hack

One of the first things we figured out was the O2 priority access situation. Reports from the Glasgow show had been circulating: long queues, people waiting hours, the priority line moving significantly faster than general admission. Since several of us were planning to attend multiple O2 venues on this tour, I started doing some research.

It turned out that O2 (the UK mobile carrier) gives its customers priority access at O2-branded venues, meaning you get into the venue before the general admission queue even starts moving. Here’s the key part: as the account holder, you can bring up to three additional people with you in that priority line.

We walked into an O2 store and explained our situation. The salesperson was genuinely delighted that a group of Americans had flown to the UK specifically to see a UK band, and she helped us set up a basic prepaid phone with a plan. Total cost: about $60 USD. For what it got us at each O2 venue, it was easily one of the best investments of the entire trip.

(Note: the Brighton Chalk show was announced later and wasn’t an O2 venue, so that one was handled differently. I’ll get to that in a future post.)

The Morning of the Brixton Show

We woke up with the kind of energy that only comes when you know something significant is about to happen.

I’d been doing sauna and cold plunge sessions back home, something I picked up partly through following Ren’s own self-care practices. He’s talked about ice baths as part of his routine, and I found it genuinely helps with mental clarity and energy. So naturally, the morning of the biggest concert I’d been to in years, I suggested we do exactly that.

One friend was game. We grabbed an Uber to a local facility, went through a sauna session followed by a cold plunge, and came back feeling reset. After a long-haul flight and some jet lag, it was exactly what I needed to feel human again.

Back at the Airbnb, I made a decision that in retrospect was slightly chaotic but completely worth it: I walked into the Turkish barbershop next door. I went in thinking I’d get a quick shave. I came out with a full haircut, a proper hot towel shave, and nose and ear waxing. The works. It took considerably longer than expected, and by the time I got back, my friends were very ready to leave. I quickly got changed and headed out with them.

Getting to the Venue

We left about four hours before the show. Reports from Glasgow had made it clear that the queues could get intense quickly, and none of us wanted to risk ending up far from the front.

When we arrived at the Brixton O2 Academy, a 5,000-capacity venue, we didn’t immediately see the queue. It turned out the line had formed on the other side of the building, and in our brief walk-around before we found it, we stumbled across Gorran, one of The Big Push’s members, just casually heading somewhere on the street. A brief but delightful moment.

We also stopped at Nando’s nearby, because you’re in the UK and Nando’s seems to be everywhere. At the restaurant we met another fan who had traveled alone from Maine, her first solo international trip. This kept happening throughout the week: you’d look up from your food or your phone and realize the person next to you had crossed an ocean for the same reason you had.

When we finally joined the priority queue, there were maybe ten people ahead of us. We settled in for the wait.

The queue itself became its own pre-show. People were playing Ren and Big Push songs. Conversations started up with fans from all over. One woman had come from Sydney, Australia. Later in the tour I’d meet someone who’d flown from Hong Kong. The geographic spread of this fanbase is genuinely staggering, and standing in that line was the first time it really hit me.

As doors approached, the Ren team started appearing. Kai and Josh were filming, camera pointed at fans in the queue. I almost stepped in front of it to talk about my travels and what the music meant to me. But I held back, a little too introverted in the moment. Honestly, the whole thing was a bit overwhelming. The excitement, the reality of actually being there, the thought that this was really happening. I don’t regret watching instead.

Brigita was there too. She does a lot of the creative art direction around Ren’s work, including designing the SickBoi clothing line. I’d seen her briefly in New York City, and it was great to spot her again.

Inside the Venue

We got right to the front row on Romain’s side of the stage, with Gorran on the opposite side and Ren center.

For a 5,000-person show, being at the front rail is both incredible and a little overwhelming. Once the venue filled in behind us, the idea of stepping away for a drink or a bathroom break became essentially theoretical. I opted to skip both. The venue staff, to their credit, came through the crowd handing out cups of water. That small gesture of care stuck with me.

The Gulls opened the show. I’d seen them in videos with The Big Push before and enjoyed what I heard, but this was my first time experiencing them live. By the end of the UK leg, after catching them at four different venues and even a brilliant impromptu busking session on Ship Street in Brighton, I was a full convert. I’ll be watching closely to see where they go next.

After The Gulls’ set, there was the inevitable equipment changeover and then the wait. The anticipation in that room was unlike anything I can easily describe.

The Big Push chose Dido’s “White Flag” as their intro, played over the PA right before the band took the stage. There’s a whole story around that Dido connection, including, later in the tour, the band playing voicemails from Dido’s lawyers over the speakers, which was genuinely hilarious. But in that moment, “White Flag” playing while thousands of people started singing along was something else entirely.

Glenn came out first, then Romain, then Gorran, and then Ren. The place absolutely erupted.

At one point during the set, the audience started humming together, one of those spontaneous crowd moments that you can’t manufacture. Ren got visibly emotional. Watching him absorb that from the stage, standing right there at the front row, is something I won’t forget.

I have a deep respect for Ren as a person, not just as an artist. If you’ve watched his Chapters videos on YouTube, you know some of what he’s been through: roughly a decade of illness that went undiagnosed, a period where doctors attributed his symptoms to mental illness based on a one-page questionnaire, telling him the pain and torment he was experiencing daily was all in his head. He was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease and several co-infections that had been making him chronically ill, barely able to function. He’s spoken openly about how close he came to giving up entirely, on music and on more than that. To know that backstory, and then to watch him standing on a stage in front of 5,000 people who love him, is genuinely moving. He never stopped fighting, and that means a lot to me for reasons I don’t need to fully explain here. I’ll always be in his corner. Whatever direction his journey takes next, I’ll be watching.

After the Show: A Window, a Song

When the show ended, we moved outside with half a mind toward potentially seeing the band. Venue security was firm, repeatedly making clear there would be no meet-and-greet opportunities and directing everyone to leave.

We stayed anyway, doing our best impression of people who had simply not heard the announcement.

Then Ren appeared at a second-floor window.

He talked briefly to the crowd gathered below, mentioning that he was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Someone asked him to sing from the window. He did. Acapella, no guitar: “Chalk Outline.” Apologies for my terrible singing voice, that’s normally reserved to the shower and car.

“Chalk Outline” is one of the songs that pulled me deepest into Ren’s world. It’s a song about antidepressants, about the numbness that can come with them, written with empathy and pure emotion that I find rare. Usually it’s a duet with Chinchilla. That night it was just Ren at a window, and a few hundred people on the street below, many of them singing the words back to him.

It was one of the best moments of the entire trip Also, if you go looking for it yourself, you may also stumble across the Monty Python parody version someone put together using the same footage, which is absolutely worth a watch.

On to Brighton

The next morning, we packed up the Airbnb. One friend had to fly home, back to work. The rest of us headed south.

Brighton is Ren’s hometown. It’s where most of his team is based, where Viktus and Liv Sangster are from, and where a significant number of his music videos have been filmed. Someone created a Google Maps pin collection marking all the video locations across the city. I used it constantly, and I’ll link it here for any Renegades planning a Brighton trip of their own.

I ended up spending more than three weeks total in Brighton over the course of the trip, going back and forth between Bristol, London, and Manchester, but always returning. It earned a permanent place in my heart somewhere around day two.

The city has two distinct personalities. There’s the seafront: restaurants, clubs, bars, shops facing the beach. And then there are the Lanes, a maze of narrow cobblestone streets winding through the city center, full of independent cafes, vintage shops, and places to just sit and exist for a while. Several of Ren’s videos were filmed in the Lanes. Walking through them, sitting with a latte, knowing that some of the images attached to songs I care about were made in those same streets, was quietly meaningful.

I also met Simon.

Simon runs a shop on the seafront and is something of a local legend within the Ren community. He’s known Ren for around nine years, going back to when Ren was just a young guy playing guitar on Brighton’s streets while most passersby walked straight past him. Simon has stories. Good ones. The kind that fill in the picture of who someone was before the world caught up to how good they are.

I also met a lot more Renegades the first night in Brighton. We were all at a local pub called East Street Tap. I met fans from Germany & Norway. It was so refreshing talking about how we all discovered Ren and the other artists.

That first week also brought an unexpected bonus show. Liv Sangster, a Brighton-based artist connected to Ren’s wider musical world, was playing a small gig at a local bar called East Street Tap. Intimate, warm, and genuinely great music. If you’re not familiar with Liv’s work, start here. There are also several jamming sessions on her Youtube jamming with Ren.

I’ll have more about Brighton in the posts ahead. For now: it is exactly as good as the Renegades told me it would be.

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Next up: Bristol, the Brighton Chalk show, and Manchester, and what it means to spend a month in a city that feels like it was made for you.

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Have you ever traveled internationally to see an artist you love? Drop a comment below, I’d love to hear your story.