As of: January 28, 2024, 10:09 a.m
By: Bert Brosch
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“Music connects us”: Gerard Conners has been playing under the railway bridge for 20 years.
© bb, private
He is known from “Fidsche”: The musician Gerard Conners from Feldkirchen has been making music under a railway bridge for 20 years.
He put his experiences into a book.
Feldkirchen – The large meeting room in the Feldkirchen town hall was full.
But this time it wasn't about development plans or association grants, which the local council has to decide on.
The blues musician and music teacher Gerard Conners presented his book “Blues with Bridge”.
Almost everyone in and around Feldkirchen knows him: he has been playing music under the railway bridge on the “Fidsche” for 20 years.
Anyone who walks or cycles from Emeranstrasse to the swimming lake in summer will see and hear Connors under the railway bridge.
For 20 years he has stood there almost every day when the weather is nice with his saxophone, harmonica or flute and plays the blues.
“As I know him from my hometown of St. Louis in Missouri – the blues city in general,” explained Conners, who has lived in Feldkirchen since December 2000, to the 80 or so blues enthusiasts at the book launch.
He doesn't just play the blues under the bridge, he also listens to people.
Many people come back again and again, not only to listen to his music, but also to tell stories.
Some pour out their hearts to him.
Five years ago he wrote the book “Blues with a Bridge” about it, now it has been published in German with the somewhat unusual title “Blues with Bridge”.
According to Conners, this doesn't just refer to the fact that he's been playing under the bridge for so long.
“Because I don’t disturb my neighbors practicing there or in underground car parks, but I’m not homeless or a street musician!
And also that every blues song has a second theme in addition to the main theme, the two are connected via a bridge.”
Conners sang a blues with three seniors who had brought their harmonicas © bb
Anyone who had hoped for music was disappointed. Apart from a harmonica piece right at the beginning and two short passages, more sobbing, traffic and train noises with the transverse flute and the saxophone, Conners played nothing that evening.
To do this, he first told the history of the blues, the music of the slaves in the fields.
“I got the blues” can be just as sad as it is happy.
And of course he reported from his book: “Penny” told him that her recently deceased husband also played the saxophone, so she came regularly.
She even showed him her private photo album.
“Mustang Sally” always comes in leather motorcycle clothes, Jake is a taxi driver who loves loud, classical music more than anything and now also likes his blues.
Charly has been looking for a woman with class and charm at the lake for years, but can't find one.
The older couple comes almost every day and always licks ice cream while listening, and an elderly woman constantly cries listening to his music because she finds it so emotional.
Conners doesn't just narrate the encounters, he plays them, almost like a theater actor.
“Music, but especially the blues, connects us as people.”
He remembers that Sony Rollins, one of the best tenor saxophonists, also practiced on a steel bridge in Manhattan for a good year.
“Today people are thinking about naming the bridge after him.
I've been playing under the railway bridge to the lake for 20 years - maybe one day it will bear my name," said Conners with a smile.
Then there was music: together with three seniors who had brought their “harps” with them, he played and the audience sang: “I woke up this morning and the mother-in-law is at the door.” Afterwards a standing ovation, many wanted to take his book with them Buy signature.
Further news from Feldkirchen and the Munich district can be found here.