Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge are certainly contemporaries and kindred spirits, having released debut albums just a year apart — 1987 and 1988, respectively. So it’s surprising that they’ve never toured together until this year.

And on Tuesday night, Aug. 26, at the Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre in Sterling Heights, the combination of two acts certainly made for more than the sum of its parts.

Despite some serious challenges — notably a poor sound mix the muddied Indigo Girls’ more layered arrangements than it did Etheridge’s less complex four-member band — both were able to carry the night with song familiarity and fan connection. There is, routinely, a lot of passion shared between these performers and their audiences that goes beyond their parades of well-loved songs, and on Tues

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