Drive-By Truckers embark on an intimate acoustic tour as they approach 20 years.

The Drive-By Truckers’ nearly 8-minute “Grand Canyon” is a sweltering cacophony of sound radiating with Allman Brothers’ soul and stadium-sized celebration. Its compelling story arrives through personal prose crafted by band co-founder Patterson Hood.

“We roll on in the darkness to some city far away/ Lug our sorrows, pains and angers and turn them into play.”

“Grand Canyon” has become one of the alt-country rocker’s most triumphant songs even though it came in the face of an unexpected setback. Hood wrote the song in response to the death of longtime crewmember Craig Lieske just as the band was preparing to tour.

“[Craig] was one of my closest friends,” Hood says. “We were all close to him.”

Somewhere between Houston and New Orleans, Hood scribbled verses into a notebook. When the bus stopped, he grabbed his guitar and quickly worked out a rough chord progression. He played it for the other band members, who agreed it presented an ideal tribute to their gone-too-soon friend, done in a style Lieske would have dug.

The Athens, Georgia group’s Friday show at the Golden State Theatre offers fans a rare opportunity to experience this different side of DBT and the band tells the stories behind songs like “Grand Canyon.” It comes as part of The Dirt Underneath Tour, a stripped-down, unplugged version of the usually loud and rowdy band. DBT also digs out deep cuts and some of the quieter tunes that usually don’t get a live action.

They first toured in this capacity eight years ago, when the group again turned a potential negative into an opportunity. “[Jason Isbell] had just left the band and we looked at the tour as rebuilding the band from the ground – or dirt – up,” Hood says. “We stripped everything down to the essence, just the songs themselves.”

DBT spent the better part of a year playing that way. It triggered an evolution into an entirely different band.

“It was a really good thing for us creatively and led to [2008’s] Brighter Than Creation’s Dark,” Hood says.

The acclaimed – and stripped-down album opens with the beautifully bleak “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife,” the true story of an indie rocker and his family found murdered in their basement in 2006. The band learned restraint, but didn’t lose their rock and roll punch.

“When it came time for us to plug in and turn it up, we had grown into a new band,” Hood adds. “We’re on fire right now. This is our peak.”

DRIVE BY TRUCKERS: THE DIRT UNDERNEATH TOUR8pm Friday, April 24. Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey. $25-$41. 649-1070.