Meet Arno De Ruyte | Musician, songwriter & producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Arno De Ruyte and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Arno, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
Friendship, curiosity, passion and hunger

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
All of the questions above can in one way or another be answered with ‘Friendship’ or ‘Friends’.
As a teenager all of us were heavily into playing music, All of our spare time was spent hanging out, forming bands, writing songs and playing gigs for ourselves in our tiny rehearsal spaces. Out of all of this we formed our current band SONS. From the start we all knew this felt different. We won a song contest for a national radio stadion, attracted a professional team to surround us and within the first year of playing tiny live shows we were propelled to open the main stage of Belgium’s biggest festival Rock Werchter.

In hindsight this really feels as the easy part.
We as friends needed to develop into business partners, professional touring musicians, professional song writers, accountants, marketing managers and so much more… To keep in touch with each other and being able to approach the challenges of the music business as friends is what makes me most excited.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Unfortunately I’ve never been in LA before so i’ll talk about the City I live in.

Our city is Antwerp.

Culturally best known for fashion designers and the Flemish ‘old masters’ painters. So I would definitely go to these museums:
– MOMU Fashion Museum: Raf Simons, Dries Van Noten, Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester and many others all originated from Antwerp. Afterwards you can always go by the bookstore to look for some beautiful coffee table books.
– KMSKA art museum: This giant museum opened in 1890 and houses incredible works of older and more contemporary Belgian painters such as Van Eyck, Rubens, Brueghel, Ensor, Magritte. Afterwards you can get a drink and some food in one of the many bars and restaurants around the square. This part of the city is the most vibrant.

These are my favourite spots for food and drinks:

Go have a beer in bars like:
– Baron, Marnixplaats 5, 2000 Antwerpen
– Cordobar, Volkstraat 25, 2000 Antwerpen

Get some lunch at:
– Tinsel, Sint-Paulusplaats 30, 2000 Antwerpen
– Dancing chocolat, Kloosterstraat 159, 2000 Antwerpen

Get dinner at:
– Café Commercial, Lange Lobroekstraat 77, 2060 Antwerpen
– Cobra, Leopoldplaats 3, 2000 Antwerpen

At night time there are loads of options if you want to go out, entrance fees are often cheap or completely free. For some alternative live music you should definitely go to Café Cabron, Kaasrui 1, 2000 Antwerpen or Het Bos, Ankerrui 5/7, 2000 Antwerpen.

This is why I love Antwerp the most, It’s huge amount of café’s and restaurants filled with the typical semi introverted but always friendly Belgian people. Antwerp is made for bicycles and pedestrians so I would recommend everybody just to to that. Walk !

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many… Friends, teachers, colleagues, books, my mom !
But without a doubt the most important person in my life is my partner Lissa. It’s a classic because it’s soo true. As a creative, one of your biggest enemies is the dreaded imposter syndrome. And time and time again she has been able to break through and reach me. She is probably the only person that knows every layer of me and can guide me through the maze of my own head.

Website: https://sonsyeahsons.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arnoderuyte/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arno-de-ruyte-83613084/

Image Credits
All pictures by:

Taike De Wilde

Alexander van der Wallen