With a jesting name and equally pun-filled album titles like Pizza Deliverance and The Dirty South, Drive-By Truckers might not seem like a band that should be taken seriously.

But when the critically acclaimed Georgia quintet takes the stage at 8 tonight at The State Theatre, 130 W. College Ave., the crowd can expect an acoustic set featuring serious, sometimes haunting depictions of Southern life, State Theatre programming manager Joe Apfelbaum said.

"We'll have our dear friend Spooner Oldham playing the Wurlitzer electric piano and we'll be doing a semi-acoustic set," Patterson Hood, singer and guitarist, said in an e-mail. "A little more storytelling and country influence than our usual big, loud rock show. It still raises hell, though."

Besides the band's guest Oldham, the current lineup of the band features Hood and Mike Cooley on guitar and sharing singing duties, John Neff on pedal steel guitar, Shonna Tucker on bass and Brad Morgan on drums.

Most of Drive-By Truckers' music focuses on life in the American South, often haunting in lyrical content and somber mood.

"We get up on stage and tell all these pretty dark stories, and hopefully, make it so much fun that it can exorcise some of the demons," Hood wrote.

The band is on the third leg of its "The Dirt Underneath" tour. It's been to State College before, but never to the State Theatre.

"It's our fifth or sixth time," Hood wrote. "Our friend Ted Swanson first brought us to town right after Southern Rock Opera came out in 2001. I love State College; it kinda reminds me of Athens, Ga., where I live."

The first Drive-By Truckers album, Gangstabilly, was released in 1998, but the band didn't garner national attention until the third. Southern Rock Opera received a four-star rating from Rolling Stone magazine and sold out faster than the band's independent record label could keep it in stock.

Tonight's show will feature two different sides of the band, Apfelbaum said.

"They're playing semi-acoustic shows, going back to do their older songs," he said.

Apfelbaum said the first half of the show will feature stripped-down versions of songs from the band's albums, while the second half will contain more rock-oriented material.

He said the State Theatre is a perfect venue for such an intimate show.

"For this acoustic thing, the State Theatre just looks great for them," he said.

Though repeatedly compared to Lynyrd Skynyrd, the band's influences are far more diverse, Hood said.

"We love old country music and punk rock, '70s power pop, pretty much every imaginable genre of rock," Hood wrote in an e-mail.

As far as the accusations of imitating Skynyrd, Hood said that Southern Rock Opera's retelling of the Skynyrd story had a lot to do with it.

"I love a good story and modern day mythology, and Skynyrd's story is like a classic tragic narrative," Hood wrote. "I was really drawn to the story and wanted to tell it in song. The most appropriate way to do so was in the style of classic rock, with three guitars, so we added a guitarist and did it."

Proving its musical diversity, the band backed soul veteran Bettye LaVette on her new album, The Scene of the Crime, released last month. Hood co-wrote one of the songs.

"We're all huge soul music fanatics," Hood said, "so it was a bit of a dream project for all of us."

For Drive-By Truckers, the music is all about telling a story.

"I just like telling stories about people and their lives," Hood said, "with all of the pathos and humor that can go with it."