Often-estranged '60s folk-rock legends Paul Simon [ tickets ] and Art Garfunkel [ tickets ] have evidently buried the hatchet, and have announced plans for a two-month tour that gets underway in October.

The approximately 30-city outing--the duo's first major tour since 1983--opens on Oct. 18 at the Detroit-area's Palace of Auburn Hills. A list of cities that the tour will visit was issued on Tuesday (9/9) (see below), and other specific dates will be unveiled soon, according to a press release.

Tickets for some shows will hit the market on Sept. 15, according to organizers, who suggest that fans consult their local media beginning this weekend for details on ticket availability.

During the tour, each night's set will feature a mix of songs played acoustically and backed by a seven-piece band. In a Tuesday press conference in New York, Simon said that the bulk of the duo's set list will come from the five Simon & Garfunkel [ tickets ]'s studio albums. A few songs from the artists' respective solo catalogs may also be included.

The stage for the reunion was set with Simon & Garfunkel's February performance at the 2003 GRAMMY^® Awards, where they received the Lifetime Achievement Award. In what was their first performance together in a decade, they opened the telecast by playing "The Sounds of Silence," one of their signature songs.

"I never actually thought that we'd lost our ability to sing together and have a blend," Simon told reporters at the press conference. "What we had was a friendship that was estranged, and the GRAMMYs was an opportunity to put that behind us. That's exactly what we did."

"This is a very deep, old friendship," Garfunkel said. "It's like family for the two of us. Our moms know each other."

The last Simon & Garfunkel tour took place in 1982 and 1983, and they also played a lengthy series of New York City concerts in 1993.

According to tour publicists, Simon & Garfunkel have sold more than 40 million albums as a duo in the U.S. alone. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

In conjunction with the tour, Columbia/Legacy will release "The Essential Simon and Garfunkel," a two-disc career retrospective, on October 10.

Simon & Garfunkel "Old Friends" tour cities:

Auburn Hills, MI
Anaheim, CA
Atlanta, GA
Atlantic City, NJ
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Columbus, OH
Denver, CO
East Rutherford, NJ
Hartford, CT
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, FL
New York, NY
Oakland, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
Portland, OR
Sacramento, CA
San Diego, CA
San Jose, CA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO
St. Paul, MN
Tampa, FL
Toronto, Ontario
Washington, DC