Idalou (Reprise)
(by Lawson)
Car Radio near 16th St. / Van Buren St.
From a car driving on Van Buren St. heading West towards Downtown at sunset, with the windows down.
Car Radio near 16th St. / Van Buren St.
From a car driving on Van Buren St. heading West towards Downtown at sunset, with the windows down.
The sun that sets in Arizona is the same that rises in any other part of the world, but here in this moment, it’s at its most beautiful. The dust and pollution play a delicate game with the light in just such a way that bold layers of purple, orange, and yellow light up the sky. This, along with the mountains and the towering clouds, creates one of the most magnificent sunsets you could ever experience. It’s even better if you get to a clear area away from town, or a high vantage point above the low-lying developments, on a monsoon day—you can see a whole span of the Valley, the sun breaking through stained-glass-skies on one end, gray clouds crashing over and through shadowy mountains on the other end. Phoenix is a wild city. Given that wildness, it’s extraordinary how straight Van Buren St. is as it passes through Downtown. This used to be the Highway, before we had I-10. It went east and then down through Tempe, to Apache Junction, Superior, Globe, and on into the mountains. On the other side it went Northwest, as Grand Ave., up through Glendale and on to Wickenburg. Many of the earliest settlers of Phoenix, like George Luhrs and Jack Swilling, followed a similar path down from the already-thriving mountain town of Wickenburg to settle the Valley in the late 19th Century. Jack Swilling was a former Confederate Soldier who was addicted to morphine throughout his later life due to a head injury he suffered prior to the Civil War. He acted as an entrepreneur in Arizona, forming a startup called the Swilling Irrigating and Canal Company in 1867. The company operated in the Salt River Valley but was founded in Wickenburg. Swilling then claimed land east of Phoenix’s central townsite and built a farm and dug irrigation canals, many following the paths of or diverting from the canals that had already been dug by indigenous communities centuries earlier. Driving down Van Buren St. on the West side of Downtown in the 2020s, its former status as highway is apparent—there’s a stretch of retro motels that transport you back decades in an instant. And this highway goes right through the center of Downtown. But once you get to the center, the former highway now seems like just another busy street. On the South side of Van Buren between 1st St. and Central Ave. is the Chase Tower. Constructed in 1972, it’s still the tallest building in Arizona—reaching 483 ft. (40 stories). It’s currently vacant and has been since October 2021. Even the company’s logo has been gone since November of the same year, but since no one else has moved in, we still call it Chase Tower. Walking down this street at sunset, Phoenix can look like a ghost town. You see buildings from the 1920s, a boomtown that busted with the Great Depression. You see others, like those in Midtown from the ‘60s and ‘70s’ before the economic crises of the ‘80s; Hance Park opens up in the ‘90s—I-10 is complete and Phoenix is the biggest city between Los Angeles and Houston—it’s the bow on the cherry on top, but in the ‘00s, after the Dot Com Bubble burst, Downtown is pretty much considered a wasteland again. Here, 2025, five years after COVID, the tallest building in Arizona is still empty, and I can J-walk across Van Buren St. at 6:00 PM on a weekday without taking a second look. Phoenix has never been truly self-sufficient—it’s always been subject to the flow of the broader American economy. Now, like the rest of the U.S, it’s slowly recovering from our latest disaster. While the progress is slow, the city is very much alive: The Phoenix Symphony, the Arizona Opera, and Ballet Arizona operate out of Symphony Hall at 2nd St. and Washington, along with touring performances and other events throughout the year. The Symphony also appears at the Orpheum Theatre (built in 1929) at 2nd Ave. and Adams St., abutting Phoenix City Hall, and the venue hosts a wide variety of other performances on a regular basis—including silent movies accompanied by live musicians, celebrating the space’s long tenure as a movie theatre after the sunset of the vaudeville circuit. Roosevelt Row lights up on the weekends, the sports facilities, CityScape, and Collier Center are hubs of activity as well. During the day thousands of medical workers converge on the ASU and UofA campuses on the Northeast side of Downtown, and thousands of committed bureaucrats run the government in the City of Phoenix offices and at the State Capitol of Arizona in the Southwest corner of town. The Convention Center is almost always full of visitors—even in the dead heat of summer. Phoenix is happening, but it has not yet established a cohesive identity within itself, and until then it can’t truly assert its position as the unifying center of the Valley. But that’s a matter for politicians to bother with, not us small folk. We just go out there each day and try to make our way in this Wild West town masquerading as a modern American city. This recording is of a song playing from a local station on a car radio. According to the DJ at the time, this audio is the original acoustic version—the first ever recording—of the same song played earlier on the album at Chase Field. The song was provided to the station by the artist, a Phoenix-based musician who is a COVID refugee from Northeast Texas, in a special arrangement with the station as part of their regular promotion of local artists.
(Some of the information in these liner notes is fictional, presented here in the attempt of satire)
(Some of the information in these liner notes is fictional, presented here in the attempt of satire)
LYRICS
Once there was a lady
In the creek I saw her bathing
And I hid my eyes in shame
She said it’s ok don’t gotta look away
We all gon’ cross that bridge one day
And we might as well least take one happy memory
Idalou, I sing your name
By the creek where I met you
Idalou, Idalou, Idalou, ooh-woo
Idalou what did you do
Where have you gone, and with whom
My Idalou, yes I do, I love you
A saddle needs a rider
So, I spent the night beside her
And I thought I’d make her mine
But then wouldn’t you know
The winter brings snow
And the flowers that bloom get buried below
And in the Spring, I found I’d lost my valentine
Idalou, I sing your name
By the creek where I met you
Idalou, Idalou, Idalou, ooh-woo
Idalou what did you do
Where have you gone, and with whom
My Idalou, yes I do, I love you
At first I thought to blame her
But ‘twas me that tried to tame her
And I knew I should have stayed
You don’t blame the breeze for breaking the trees
You don’t blame the trees for falling to their knees
Everything that’s under heaven just does what it’s gotta do
Idalou I sing your name
By the creek where I met you
Idalou, Idalou, Idalou, ooh-woo
Idalou what did you do
Where have you gone, and with whom
My Idalou, yes I do, I love you
In the creek I saw her bathing
And I hid my eyes in shame
She said it’s ok don’t gotta look away
We all gon’ cross that bridge one day
And we might as well least take one happy memory
Idalou, I sing your name
By the creek where I met you
Idalou, Idalou, Idalou, ooh-woo
Idalou what did you do
Where have you gone, and with whom
My Idalou, yes I do, I love you
A saddle needs a rider
So, I spent the night beside her
And I thought I’d make her mine
But then wouldn’t you know
The winter brings snow
And the flowers that bloom get buried below
And in the Spring, I found I’d lost my valentine
Idalou, I sing your name
By the creek where I met you
Idalou, Idalou, Idalou, ooh-woo
Idalou what did you do
Where have you gone, and with whom
My Idalou, yes I do, I love you
At first I thought to blame her
But ‘twas me that tried to tame her
And I knew I should have stayed
You don’t blame the breeze for breaking the trees
You don’t blame the trees for falling to their knees
Everything that’s under heaven just does what it’s gotta do
Idalou I sing your name
By the creek where I met you
Idalou, Idalou, Idalou, ooh-woo
Idalou what did you do
Where have you gone, and with whom
My Idalou, yes I do, I love you
© 2025 Malno Music