Husband and wife Tony King and Kris Ralph (aka Nina Vox) are Beautifully Mad. That's a musical duo whose songs range from the comedic The Day the Queen Smoked a Joint - self-explanatory, surely? - to Billy's Dream, an anti-war number inspired by the World War II bombing of Dresden described in Kurt Vonnegut jnr's Slaughterhouse-Five.

They've won several awards including an international songwriting award judged by Tom Waits - one of King's inspirations - and Garbage's Shirley Manson.

King says, "We like to draw people into the stories - it's s very much storytelling, and we tell a lot of stories in between songs."

The aim, he says, is that the audience doesn't just see a band, but has a real experience.

It's their first time performing together in Canberra since they performed in a Spiegeltent at Parliament House in 2013 and their first time playing at Teatro Vivaldi.

"I was originally from Canberra," King says. He played in a band, The Naturals, that won a song contest in 1982 at 2CC ("as it was then") and they moved to Sydney.

"On the cusp of being signed to Sony we broke up ... the usual [reasons], band difficulties, people wanting to do different things."

King stayed in Sydney and continued to work in music - "I never stopped gigging, but it was very hard". He also fell into being one of the writers of the radio political satire How Green Was My Cactus in 1986. He had met the show's then head writer Doug Edwards in Canberra while acting in some of Edwards' pieces and they had hit it off. And three decades later, King still writes periodically for the show.

"It's been really good fun - I love politics," King says.

He says it was most enjoyable in the days of colourful politicians like Bob Hawke, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Paul Keating and admits that nowadays the more "stage-managed" breed of politician seems to lack a bit of personality. One time, he remembers, Edwards was going to Italy and had to write about 40 episodes ahead, but then suddenly Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as prime minister.

"They all had to be rewritten while he was on holiday. I wasn't writing it then."

He also met and married Ralph, an actor whose credits include working with the young Russell Crowe in a production of the musical Blood Brothers - for three weeks. Crowe was fired after headbutting co-star Peter Cousens over a disagreement. She has also had an extensive musical career of her own as well as working with King.

In the early 1990s King and Ralph formed the acoustic group Beautifully Mad - with influences ranging from James Taylor to Leonard Cohen to Sting - and won a lot of acclaim including several ARIA Awards and Australian Songwriting Awards with King being named Songwriter of the Year in the latter in 2009 as well as winning best lyrics for Billy's Dream and winning best song in both the open and folk/acoustic categories for When We're Old.

King says they hope to go to the United States to perform in the near future but obtaining a performing visa is expensive. Still, he and Ralph are obviously survivors in the notoriously tough music industry and it's a good bet they will find a way to do it.