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They’re not particularly dirty, not by the standards of, say, Pigpen of “Peanuts” fame.

But they are both named Doug, and whether it’s the fact they live in trailers, have senses of humor that tilt toward the darker side or because the music they play seems as earthy as a shovelful of freshly turned Tennessee red clay, it’s a name that stuck.

Together, Doug Harris and Doug Sneed have been performing and songwriting for roughly six years. Their latest project, The Dirty Dougs, is making the rounds at venues like Two Doors Down (formerly Toogie’s) in downtown Maryville, where they’ll stop on Thursday night to hang out, spin a few yarns and play some songs off their most recent album, “Without ‘U’ We’d Be Dogs.”

“The name came from one night at the acoustic jam we started at Brackins (Blues Bar), when a friend called us that, and we kind of liked it,” Harris told The Daily Times this week. “It kind of fit in a lot of ways, and part of that has to do with the music. For better or for worse, we’re just two Southern boys who like to keep things fairly simple, and we don’t mind getting our hands dirty if it means the product’s going to be better.

“It’s also kind of a tongue-in-cheek thing, because we both live in trailers, and there’s such a stereotype attached to that. We’re poking fun at the very thing that, at the same time, is a very sensitive thing to some people in the South — that world that gets looked at as being less than appetizing.

“I told a girl the other night that if Abe Lincoln was born today, he’d be born in a trailer,” Harris added, “because only rich people can afford log cabins these days.”

The two Dougs first met in Murfreesboro, when Sneed joined Fuzzy Dice, one of Harris’ early projects. The two hit it off almost immediately, Harris said, and soon started writing songs together. Over the years, they’ve played together and separately, always maintaining a close friendship and getting together to pen new tunes.

“We really just wanted to get the songs in some type of form where we could get them copyrighted,” Harris said. “But we got in the studio and were having so much fun, we decided to make an album.”

For anyone who’s been a regular to the Monday night acoustic jam at Brackins, the chemistry between Sneed and Harris is palpable. They’re relaxed and affable on stage, more like a couple of crazy cousins who always seem to be on the right side of an inside joke. They swap glances, laugh and poke fun at one another.

But when it comes time to make music, the two know how to get down and, for lack of a better word, dirty. Harris blows a harmonica with enough power to push the glass out of a window, and Sneed’s style of guitar playing runs the gamut from intricate to gritty. “Without ‘U’ We’d Be Dogs” captures that chemistry perfectly, simmering the whole way through like a thick pot of gumbo on the back burner of a greasy, well-used stove.

“It’s very organic when we get together, and we kind of have a sense of where the other person is going before they go there,” Harris said. “That’s that X-factor you’re always looking for when you’re writing a song or performing, kind of knowing that if you go out on a limb, the other person has got your back.

“And we can really go out on a limb when we do it acoustic. Acoustically, we can be totally experimental and go outside of the lines a little bit, but still keep some sort of structure that’s a happy medium for both of us.”

The Dirty Dougs is just one project for the very busy musicians. Harris, who put the Downing-Harris Band on hold when bandmate Terry Downing moved to Nashville, is a harmonica-slinger who’s much sought after by local bands; he often sits in with Jenna and the Joneses and other local projects. He’s also got another group, the Doug Harris Band, that’s a different entity altogether from The Dirty Dougs.

“We’re a groove-oriented band; we build off of rhythm ,and we’re kind of closer to funk than anything Doug and I ever did,” Harris said. “For some reason, when Doug and I get together, we go more rootsy. We both love all kinds of music, but the Doug Harris Band is a full-tilt electric band, centered around the live show with music that people can get into and dance to.”

When he’s not a Dirty Doug, Sneed divides his time between two local outfits — Cheating Spoon and a new group, the Exotic Llamas.

Ever since the two started the Monday night acoustic jam at Brackins, they’ve drawn an audience made up of fellow musicians as much as it is fans. It can be a little daunting, Harris added, playing for peers, but at the same time, the rough-and-raw nature of the music The Dirty Dougs make lends itself to a fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants approach to performing.

“It’s really an honor in so many ways, and we really love the fact that musicians do turn out to hear what we’re going to play and pay attention to what we’re doing,” Harris said. “The thing about musicians is that they all understand that there’s going to be bad nights and bad notes, and I hope when they’re listening to it, they appreciate the effort and the story we’re trying to tell.

“When it comes down to it, that’s what I look for — what are you trying to say, musically and lyrically? On the album, we didn’t do very many overdubs on it, and sometimes, I think, that’s when the most beauty in the music comes out. When it’s not cleaned up, when it’s not this polished wall of sound, that’s when it sometimes sounds the best. When you put together a perfect product, sometimes, I think, the story is lost.”