Scarlet Town (song)
"Scarlet Town" is a folk song written and performed by Bob Dylan that appears as the sixth track on his 2012 studio album Tempest.They synopsize it as describing "a damned city" and note that the "nostalgic tone" of Dylan's vocal "gives a hypnotic force to the song and makes it one of the triumphs of the album".They also praise the musicianship, claiming that Donnie Herron's banjo and David Hidalgo's accordion "confer a country style on the song" and that Charlie Sexton plays "an excellent guitar solo" beginning at the 4:09 mark.Dylan sings of economic ruin ('Gold is down to a quarter of an ounce') and generational cycles of violence ('In Scarlet Town, you fight your father’s foes'); he even haunts a bar, drinking away his regrets over a 'flat-chested junkie whore' and barking at the performer to play Ernest Tubb’s twangy lament 'Walking the Floor Over You'."Scarlet Town" played over the end credits of the season premiere of the Cinemax television show Strike Back: Vengeance on August 17, 2012 prior to the release of Tempest.