Many performers play for an audience. Singer-songwriters Susan Werner and David Wilcox prefer to have a conversation with theirs through song.

It should be like “a good night out with a great friend,” said Werner, who with Wilcox opens the first Club Kuss event of the season at the Clark State Performing Arts Center on Friday.

Werner and Wilcox don’t perform together, but they take turns playing songs, to which the other will react with something similar. The pair don’t use set lists, instead choosing songs that fit their mood and the spontaneity adds to the energy.

For Wilcox, this will be a return to his roots, of sorts. It was as an Antioch College student in 1976 the Mentor, Ohio, native first picked up a guitar despite having no previous musical ambition.

“I heard the guitars in the dorm and the sound it made in the stairwells and decided then that music would be in my life in one way or another,” he said. The Yellow Springs-based school was just the beginning of a long musical road that has seen critics compare Wilcox to James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake.

He’s found the perfect onstage partner in Werner, as both value the literary quality of their songs. Their subjects could range from politics to cars to love or something out of the headlines.

One will play, and the other will follow, trying to match the song in a sort of call and response.

If could be like the news with a groove and a melody attached, Werner said. “It will be a magical evening for fans of songwriting,” she said.

Wilcox calls it a musical conversation. You can’t even peg them into any genre, with music varying from American folk to country, blues, gospel and even torch music.

“What could happen is you think a song was written for you,” Wilcox said. “Music has that possibility.”

The Club Kuss series offers a more personal, unique experience for audiences. A Club Kuss lobby party will kick things off at 6 p.m., offering a cash bar and free appetizers.

Tickets cost $30, $24 for seniors and $15 for students, which includes the lobby party. Tickets can be purchased at the Performing Arts Center ticket office or call (937) 328-3874, or go to pac.clarkstate.edu.