Ren wrote this about the video--- Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write. Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday. I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again. This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary. Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe. Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then. On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left. Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late. Joe’s body was never found. Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe. As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since. My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew. Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised. Turn on notifications for the video here: ua-cam.com/video/n3JNtfi4Vb0/v-deo.html Raising money for RNLI : www.justgiving.com/page/ren-gill-1685546882254?Link&/ren-gill-1685546882254& Freckled Angels album: renmakesmerch.com/products/freckled-angels-cd Presave Suic*de: found.ee/ren-suic-de
Raw, vivid, shows real struggle within from the view of both sides. Mental health has got to be taken seriously far before the climax of all that boils up inside. Suicide can be prevented, but we all have to change our mindsets and erase the stigma. There has to be real solid help out there. We all have a responsibility here. Be the change. There really is a tomorrow and light through the Darkness. Find someone you trust to walk through that Darkness with you until you find the light again.
He is an amazing artist. If you haven’t checked out NF yet do. I feel like Nate is equally as talented. They are both breaking the glass ceiling on mental health and getting people to talk.
Only Ren can address such sensitive topic in this healing and meaningful way. His video resonates with everyone affected! Such a masterpiece!! Maybe I should have kept my original comment: "Only Ren can address such sensitive topic in this a healing and meaningful way. His video resonates with everyone affected! Such a masterpiece!!" The Times They Are A-Changin’
Thankyou sir for doing this reaction. This was so profoundly personal for you. A little boy lost his father..wow..... so you have walked many familiar miles in the shoes that this song wears i see. Well We appreciate your bravery to get on here and bare your soul and to spread your own message of hope and encouragement. Btw... i bet your dad loves all the galaxies that you have painted. Keep being creative. Your are one of a kind
Thank you so much for your kind words! Yes, it has been a long road. I plan on sharing more of my story in hopes it helps someone in simular shoes, I’m finding it also is helping in my healing process. It never goes away, but we learn how to grow from these experiences. Thank you, I will keep painting.
Ren wrote this about the video---
Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write.
Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday.
I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again.
This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary.
Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe.
Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then.
On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left.
Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late.
Joe’s body was never found.
Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe.
As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew.
Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came.
During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised.
Turn on notifications for the video here: ua-cam.com/video/n3JNtfi4Vb0/v-deo.html
Raising money for RNLI :
www.justgiving.com/page/ren-gill-1685546882254?Link&/ren-gill-1685546882254&
Freckled Angels album: renmakesmerch.com/products/freckled-angels-cd
Presave Suic*de: found.ee/ren-suic-de
Thank you for sharing this.
Raw, vivid, shows real struggle within from the view of both sides. Mental health has got to be taken seriously far before the climax of all that boils up inside. Suicide can be prevented, but we all have to change our mindsets and erase the stigma. There has to be real solid help out there. We all have a responsibility here. Be the change. There really is a tomorrow and light through the Darkness. Find someone you trust to walk through that Darkness with you until you find the light again.
Amen.
Thanks for being human with us.
You’re welcome, I hope we can inspire more people to open up and be real.
No reason to say "sorry" at all. This was so genuine. All I wanna do is hug you. Ren is indeed breaking molds as you said.
Thank you for your kind words. He is and it’s about time we start talking about this.
Ren's songs & videos can be brutal
Yes, but all are healing!
He also has lighter songs & videos like Humble, Power, Fire.
I really believe he is the greatest artist alive.
He is an amazing artist. If you haven’t checked out NF yet do. I feel like Nate is equally as talented. They are both breaking the glass ceiling on mental health and getting people to talk.
good upload man, thanks
Glad you enjoyed it
Only Ren can address such sensitive topic in this healing and meaningful way.
His video resonates with everyone affected! Such a masterpiece!!
Maybe I should have kept my original comment:
"Only Ren can address such sensitive topic in this a healing and meaningful way.
His video resonates with everyone affected! Such a masterpiece!!"
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Thank you for you comment. He does not disappoint. The story behind this song is song is tough an as raw as the song.
I'm so sorry for your loss, brother. Hang in there. I feel you.
Thank you for your kind words.
Beautiful reaction. Thank you
You’re, welcome. Thank you for your kind words.
Thankyou sir for doing this reaction. This was so profoundly personal for you. A little boy lost his father..wow..... so you have walked many familiar miles in the shoes that this song wears i see. Well We appreciate your bravery to get on here and bare your soul and to spread your own message of hope and encouragement. Btw... i bet your dad loves all the galaxies that you have painted. Keep being creative. Your are one of a kind
Thank you so much for your kind words! Yes, it has been a long road. I plan on sharing more of my story in hopes it helps someone in simular shoes, I’m finding it also is helping in my healing process. It never goes away, but we learn how to grow from these experiences. Thank you, I will keep painting.
I’m glad you didn’t give up!!!! Love you brother
Thanks man, some days are still a struggle, I just cling to those thoughts and hope. Thanks for the love. Love ya to man.
❤🙏thank you❤
You are so welcome
I love you Brub Brub
Love you too.
Thank you!
You are welcome. Thanks for watching.
❤
❤