TWO of America’s great protest songwriters from the Greenwich Village folk scene, Tom Paxton and Janis Ian, are finally touring Britain in tandem for the first time.

Tomorrow they play the Grand Opera House, in York, on a nine-date itinerary encapsulated perfectly in its tour title of Together At Last.

“I’ve known this kid since she was 13,” says 76-year-old Tom, recalling his first encounter with Janis, now 62. “It was a memorable meeting because it happened one Sunday evening when we used to have a Sunday hootenanny in the Village to raise money for Broadside magazine, which was printing all the political songs we were writing.

“At the hootenanny, we took it in turns to sing our songs and join in with each other if we felt like it, and suddenly this girl with a guitar as big as she was sang this song and I was almost knocked off my seat. It was Janis, and it was a few years later that she sang Society’s Child.”

At 15, Janis Ian had a hit with that provocative, taboo-busting meditation about an interracial romance, and she would re-emerge a decade later in the mid-1970s with the reflective At Seventeen, her Grammy Award-winning signature song.

She remains an unflinching topical commentator. Tom, meanwhile, has shared her affinity for tackling controversial issues fearlessly in his protest songs, as well as writing songs of love and humour, such as Bottle Of Wine, Ramblin’ Boy and The Last Thing On My Mind.

Paxton and Ian did not perform together, however, until 2012, but the stage partnership has proved fruitful ever since. “It’s different from what people might expect. It’s not your generic split bill,” says Tom. “We keep fiddling with the format, though it always involves taking to the stage together and staying on stage together, most of the time, singing on each other’s songs.

“I play acoustic guitar, Janis herself is a splendid guitarist, and though it might be gilding the lilly, we have Robin Bullock playing various instruments for us.”

He remembers the first Paxton and Ian show as being “exhilarating”. “We had rehearsed quite a bit before that concert, and I felt it had really been worth getting together as I arrived. Janis felt the same way,” says Tom.

“It’s wonderful to sing on one another’s songs and we’ve kept pushing the envelope, so we’re taking verses on each other’s numbers and putting together two surprises for the end. I’ve just been down in Nashville for two days to rehearse with Janis and Robin and it’s sounding more wonderful than ever.”

You can sense their mutual appreciation. “It’s a tremendous feeling to sing a section of a Janis Ian song and then look at her and see this beaming smile, and you think, ‘Good, I did that one OK’! I’m sure I react the same way when Janis is singing one of my songs,” says Tom.

Their songs endure, too. “For me, the test of a good song is if you still enjoy singing it after 50 years, and I certainly still enjoy singing those songs, so I must have got them right, where there are others that I think, ‘well, let them die a merciful death’. I couldn’t imagine having a hit like Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini and here you are at 76 saying, ‘right, let’s do the bikini one’. That would be intolerable.”

Why haven’t more musicians come together for shows in the mould of Together At Last? “They’re probably not as perceptive as Janis and I,” Tom says with a chuckle. “They haven’t thought it through, though more of it is beginning to happen, like Sting and Vince Gill doing a show together, part song, part interview, part doing each other’s songs. It worked really well.

“I wonder if Judy Collins and Joan Baez would do something like this. I don’t know if they would consider it, or even if they like each other, but they’re the ones that first popped into my mind as the ideal coupling.”

Tom was once asked who he would pick as a co-writer if the chance ever arose. “I said Sir Paul McCartney... or Paul Simon, who opened for me in a Soho folk club in 1965. That was the last night he ever made less money than me.”

Tom Paxton and Janis Ian, Together At Last, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow (March 28) starting at 7.30pm. For tickets, call the box office one 08448 713024. Alternatively, visit the website at atgtickets.com/york