The Naked Trucker & T-bones Show airs Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. David Koechner and Dave 'Gruber' Allen have been together for more than 10 years, honing their characters. Though many try to discredit the show bysaying it's a cheap satire of the stereotypical redneck lifestyle, the duo said they feel the characters are worth more than face value. As evident in this Q and A, the boys really love what they do and want to make the TV show work.

Why did you decide to move the concept to TV?

David Koechner: It should have happened seven years ago. Our drive isn't one specific goal; I always wanted to do a movie. This is the first time we had a full opportunity to do it but it's not the first opportunity we've been given to do it.

What inspires the character of Gerald "T-bones" Tibbons?

DK: The quest for truth. I studied under Del Close in Chicago, and his M.O. was to always be truthful. With this we bring truth to the characters and always make it smart. You have to trust your audience, and treat them with respect. Much of the press misses that aspect and calls the show a "redneck adventure," but we've hand crafted these characters and we bring a lot of truth to these characters. As far as Gerald goes, he absolutely and purely lives for every moment and he wants to power over every moment.

Dave Allen: what ever David Koechner just said is true.

What drew the two of you together?

DK: We met at Saturday Night Live in the 95-96 season and Dave was a guest writer. The following summer we did a movie together called Dill Scallion that was kind of like a country music Spinal Tap. It was a road show, so we spent three weeks on a tour bus together. Turns out we both grew up in the midwest so culturally we had a lot in common and we both enjoyed the same brand of comedy

DA: Neither of us went into standup and we both got into ensemble comedy.

DK: Yeah, a friendship was struck or at least our characters hit it off and we been together ever since the road trip and then there were a lot late night affairs performing at [L.A. club] Largo

DA: Largo was such a great place to act and you can get a sense that it's a very eclectic music and comedy club.

How much improv is involved in the TV version of the show?

DK: Well the live show is always improvised, but TV shows have to be written to adhere to a strict time schedule, so the format doesn't lend to improvising.

DA: The actual run time of the show is 21 minutes, so there are five acts around the commercial breaks so a lot of stuff was cut because of the time element.

DK: You're a slave to the clock so you're really cheating yourself in another aspect of the show if you improvise much like a brewer would craft their beer.

Is the show that much out of the realm of political correctness?

DA: There actually is political correctness because T-bones is saying things jokingly because he knows they are wrong and he wants the audience to pick up on that and he wants Naked Trucker to give an eye roll saying "I know that's wrong and the audience knows its wrong."

DK: There are those satirical elements that are overlooked because the audience thinks they already know what they're getting into.

DA: There's this one scene where Gerald throws a "cola bomb," at a police officer and there's that Roadrunner element but then T-bones shouts out "Kent State," so then it's taken out of the realm of Itchy and Scratchy. So he leaves it up to the audience to really say whether it's PC or not.

The two characters are very different, are you like that in real life or are your characters formed liked that?

DK: We tried to form off of the Abbott and Costello, Smothers Brothers thing, you need the different characters to feed off of each other

DA: One team I like a lot, but I never said, "oh lets copy this." Laurel and Hardy. They have their differences but which one's the straight man? With Naked Trucker and T-bones it's like, they're colorful and mischievous because they're grotesque but they're also human and not just another southerner or a redneck like some people think.

Many say the Naked Cowboy in New York City stole your idea? Any truth to that?

DA: I've heard that and vice versa, no one stole the idea, it was just a spontaneous creation.

DK: There's really no similarity whatsoever.

DA: The one thing we do have in common is a guitar and we both have no clothes on; though he's got a better physique than I do.

Hitchhiker of the week in the first episode was Will Ferrell, what can we expect in terms of more special guests?

DK: You should look forward to every show of course, but besides that, yeah you should look for a guest in every show and we always like to get a new set of eyeballs working with us in every show.

DA: We've worked with everyone from Jack and Kyle from Tenacious D and people from Freaks and Geeks, which I've worked on.

What kind of creative control does Comedy Central have on the show?

DK: They give us a lot of freedom, even though it took us time to put it on TV. They know the habits of their viewers, so they suggest things to us but in no way did they tie our hands.

DA: Other people we pitched this idea to said "yeah we kind of get it" but they never wanted to do a show about it. Comedy Central did and they were helpful in making it into a TV show.

DK: There are a lot of real fans on staff at Comedy Central. This isn't a watered down version of our show, there are the standards, but those are practical matters, so if we cursed they just said, "you realize there will be bleeps?"

DA: So when we do songs, they said just don't do a straight up song, which we don't anyway, so we'd trim a verse of a song to keep to the time element.

What are you really wearing behind the guitar?

DK: He's the Naked Trucker -- whaddya think?

DA: To me it's kind of like a "who cares" thing, they even don't talk about him being naked in the show. In one second you can see that guy's about freedom, he's kind of a hippie and living out his freedom in appearance.

Is it hard to write a comedy show each week or do they tend to write themselves?

DK: If only it were that easy, a friend of mine read that Stephen King mentioned, "writing is like archaeology, you keep on uncovering it."

DA: Just like our act is like archaeology... 'cause its so old. We keep revisiting bits and add on to them, and the good thing about TV is we have a staff that we can say, hey we need a joke and we get response.

DK: Every joke needs a premise, and we just need to uncover what the premise is. What will you write, how do you say it, its not just a first draft, it's the second and third and so on.

DA: Luckily we have a good writing staff that can come up with great ideas and they understand stories that really drive the show, that the characters are involved in.

Will there be a CD on the way?

DA: We're putting stuff together, there's going to be a live show on DVD, Naked trucker and T-bones Live at the Troubadour, and a CD version will be coming out later. We're also getting into the iTunes generation and each month we'll have one song a month up for download on our Web site.

Are you still doing shows at Largo, where you got your start?

DA: We do a show about once a month there, check their Web site, we have a few songs on that website too. It's been a great home for us over the years and the owner, Mark Flanagan, is one of our greatest supporters.