They've been married for four years, but only now have Amy Grant and Vince Gill embarked on their first non-Christmas-time joint tour.

After seeing their show last night at the 'Dome, you kinda wonder what took them so long.

An attractive Nashville couple, they are similar yet complimentary artists who specialize in the sort of acoustic-based pop and country aimed directly at adult ears.

The show was divided into thirds, with separate Grant and Gill performances followed by a duet finale.

Grant's one-hour opening set shows she's come a long way since her early days as a Christian music artist. She's now firmly in singer-songwriter mode, and her best material sounds like it comes from an artist raised on a diet of Joni Mitchell's Blue and Carole King's Tapestry.

Sadly, Grant played only one song from her superb post-divorce album, Behind the Eyes -- possibly the lyrics remain too painful to revisit -- and some of her more intensely introspective material was omitted in favour of sweet pop confections such as Every Heartbeat and the gratingly bouncy Baby Baby.

Still she dusted off an old favourite from her Christian days, El Shaddai done strikingly, while Gill came out to harmonize on House of Love, a Marvin-and-Tammy soul ballad.

Gill followed with a set that was virtually a master's class in contemporary country, rustic enough to be authentically western yet endowed with sweet pop melodies and his own honey-dipped vocals.

Perfectly pleasant and polite yet, like Grant, he also skipped over some of the more emotionally turbulent songs he recorded for High Lonesome Sound, his own Blood on the Tracks.