Unbroken

The evening proceeds with a casualness that befits the album that occasioned it. "Press On" is an unbound, rustic-sounding collection of Carter Family nuggets ("Diamonds in the Rough," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"), classic June Carter originals ("Ring of Fire") and quirky new numbers ("Tiffany Anastasia Lowe"); the playing is sharp, but the overall effect is loose, like a front-porch jam, complete with giggles and miscues.

The plan for the concert was to perform the entire album, but the script gets tossed at the outset. The first standing ovation comes a good hour before the music even starts, when Johnny takes the stage to say a few words. His illness is evident mostly in his face, which is swollen and red. The only time the singer alludes to his health is when he thanks the Lord for allowing him to stand, if only for today, on his own two feet. Otherwise, he talks of June and the love they share. "Her time has come now," he proclaims, his voice still deep as ever. "This album, 'Press On,' is just a small bit of what she has to offer."

June, dressed in a smart suit and high heels, her hair pulled loosely back, professes to be embarrassed by the attention, but she thanks Johnny for his remarks all the same. After instructing everyone to get something to eat, she walks off. When she returns to the stage over an hour later, she does so with her autoharp in hand and playfully asks, after noticing how much of her legs become exposed when she sits on her stool, if anyone has a safety pin that she can borrow.

Johnny looks on from the front row as June introduces her first song, explaining how she wrote it, a long time ago, after waking up in the middle of the night and telling herself, "I think I'm in love with a wild man." She looks at Johnny. "I was frightened of him. I wasn't going to tell him I was in love with him. And I wasn't going to tell anyone else either."

Then she plays "Ring of Fire." The way Johnny immortalized it, the song chronicled a man's unsteady relationship with wildness and his inability to break free from it. June reclaims the song, seizing its perspective and flipping it around. In the hands of June and her band, "Ring of Fire" is a rickety, swaying folk ballad. As she sings, "burns, burns, burns," you can hear the voice of a girl who long ago fell for a guy who trashed hotel rooms for the hell of it. The kind of guy who'd borrow your car, wrap it around a tree and never apologize.

Johnny's visibly moved as he joins his wife to perform onstage. The man may be ailing, but he can still play a guitar and sing, and he introduces "The Far Side Banks of Jordan" by offering up a bit of its history. Twenty-five years ago, he brought the tune with him from Nashville to Jamaica. "This is going to be our song," he told his wife. And so they play it. They're voices aren't perfect together, never have been; June's is hillbilly sweet and high where Johnny's is earthbound and famously, immovably low. The point is that the song is theirs, and they're still singing it. When the tune's over, Johnny takes June's hand. He kisses it, considers it for a second, and then gives it a bite. Then he walks off the stage and out of the tent. He never returns. Abe Lincoln all the way.

June's group is a touch under-rehearsed. At one point, John Carter, the only child of June and Johnny, the co-producer of "Press On" and a member of the band, shuffles a bunch of papers and announces, "We lost the lyrics!" "Oh I know it," his mom replies, and the band launches into "Losin' You."

The mishaps only underscore the informality of the event. When June wants to locate one of her daughters, she simply cries out, "Where are you Rose?" (In the distance: "I'm over here Mama.") Before singing "Tiffany Anastasia Lowe," June calls up the granddaughter who inspired her to write it. Tiffany, as her grandmother points out, is young and quite striking; apparently she was or is being courted by a certain maverick film director. On the record, the song is an oddity. Here, it makes sense. Tiffany can only laugh as her grandma sings, "Tiffany run find an earthquake girl/Go jump in a crack/Just don't let Quentin Tarantino find out where you're at/'Cause Quentin Tarantino makes the strangest movies that I've ever seen."

The crowd is as loose as the band by the time the encore rolls around. June's set her autoharp down and taken the mike. She pumps her arms like a preacher, unleashing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," arguably the most immortal of all the Carter Family songs. The tent feels like a church as the crowd sings along from their seats. The applause lasts long after the spiritual winds down. No one cries out for Johnny. It was June's show, and this time, Johnny was her guest.

• View blog reactions