Two of New Zealand's best known musicians will perform at the Royal Wanganui Opera House next week.
Shayne Carter and Don McGlashan have been writing and performing their original compositions with different bands since the late 1970s and discovered their compatibility for the first time last year.
When they teamed up to play a set at the Auckland Arts Festival last year, they left their audience begging for more and received rave reviews.
The surprising part of the story is that they were not playing their greatest hits for the crowd - many of the songs had never been been played live before.
"We went through each others song lists and selected the ones we wanted to play," says Carter.
"It has been a great experience to have my catalogue curated by a songwriter of Don's calibre."
Carter has recently returned to his southern roots and says he is often "off the grid" in Aramoana, near his home town of Dunedin.
He stays in Dunedin for its cell phone coverage but says he is happy to be living and writing at the seaside settlement where there is often only "the sea and the seals" in sight.
"I lived in Auckland for a long time and I came back south a year ago."
This will be the second tour he has undertaken with McGlashan since the arts festival gig. They have not recruited other band members for the tours and Carter says he is happy with the sounds they produce as a two-piece.
Both multi-instrumentalists, they use looping technology and different instruments to create the sounds they want.
McGlashan, speaking from Auckland, says the lack of other musicians opens up a "lot of space" to take the songs to different places.
"Shayne chose a Front Lawn song from 1986 that I hadn't played live before and I was dubious at first but we have worked out a great version.
I selected a Dimmer song called Pendulum. We play it with a lot of hand claps and percussion with Shayne playing organ and I love playing that song."
He says his own songs have gained a freshness with Carter's input and the lack of a full band has opened up spaces to work with.
"As a writer, you tend to reject songs just because they are not working the way you want them to and they end up in your bottom drawer.
"Working with another songwriter is challenging because Shayne will ask a question like 'Why did you go to that chord?' and you have to really think about it."
McGlashan previously fronted Blam Blam Blam, The Front Lawn and The Mutton Birds while Carter started with Bored Games in Dunedin and went on to form the Double-Happys, Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer and The Adults.
It would seem that a collaboration between the two long-serving front men could have gone either way.
"Yes it could because it is quite challenging" says McGlashan. "We agreed we would not veto each other's song choices and that's worked out well."
Both musicians are working on their next solo albums now but is it possible they might write songs together?
"It hasn't come up but I'd be open to it," says Carter.
"I think it's a wonderful idea," says McGlashan.
-Don McGlashan and Shayne Carter, Royal Wanganui Opera House, Saturday June 3 at 8.30pm.