Today's Country Tidbits

Just once, wouldn't you love to see where Taylor Swift keeps all of her awards and trophies? She'll be honored tonight in Nashville at the CMT Artist of the Year event, taping tonight to air December 13th. Then later this week, she'll be honored at Billboard's annual Women In Music event, taking home the Woman of the Year award. Taylor decided to release a new single this week, too - the song she performed on the CMA Awards, "Ours," was released yesterday. What does the songwriter say about the song? “It’s about being in love with someone that, you know, people don’t necessarily think is a good idea, and everybody’s giving you a hard time about it, but you don’t really care. It says, ‘The stakes are high, the water’s rough, but this love is ours.’”

Darius Rucker will headline the Grammy Artist Revealed concert on December 13th in New York City.

It's a best-wishes, mazel-tov, happily ever after to Jennifer Nettles, who married her long-time boyfriend, Justin Miller, this past Saturday in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The two have been an item for over two years. If you want to see him, check out the "Want To" video - that sleeping man in the bed? Yep, that's Justin!

More congratulations are in order - George Strait and his wife Norma will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary on December 4th.

Dierks Bentley hopes that his new single, "Home," will become a uniting force in our nation. “The song is written in a way that’s open ended as far as how people want to—what they want to walk away with. I mean, I think it’s obvious it’s a song about our country and about the ups and downs and about the scars we have in our past, but at the end of the day, no matter what side of the fence you’re on, we all live here. I mean, you have to walk through the front door of your house every day. This is our house. This is our one country.”

Little Big Town has a version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" available on iTunes, and they're thinking about recording a Christmas album. About choosing holiday classics to cover, LBT says, “[Karen] It was hard. [Kimberly] We went through a ton of Christmas songs ‘cause we’re thinkin’ about makin’ a Christmas record, so this is like another start of a Christmas record. It’s so much harder...you think, ‘Oh, I’ll just pull together all my favorites,’ but when you start looking at the great classics and how you want to cover them and you don’t want to mess them up.” They won't, not with those voices!

December 15th is National Bill of Rights Day, and stars and students across America will be celebrating with a Free to Tweet contest put on by the First Amendment Center. Blake Shelton, a very free spirit on Twitter, will be taking part, as will Joe Nichols, Mary Chapin Carpenter and a bunch of other artists who use Twitter to express themselves. Students will vie for $5,000 scholarships by tweeting their thoughts and using the #freetotweet hashtag. The contest lasts all day long.

And now it can be revealed - Darius Rucker and Kris Kristofferson behind the scenes at the White House last week...

Vince Gill donated $12,000 to the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, to help fund the construction of a children's exhibit. The state's musical heritage will be the focus of the exhibit.

Congratulations to Lady Antebellum, who have the #1 song on the Billboard chart this week with "We Owned the Night." Jason Aldean tops the Country Aircheck Weekly chart this week with "Tattoos on this Town."

The tweet of the day is from Kellie Pickler: "That awkward moment when you bump into someone at a department store & say excuse me before realizing its actually a mannequin."

Today's Country Tidbits

Garth Brooks is loving playing Nashville, and last night, just didn't want to leave the stage. He did two encores, telling the crowd that he'd really missed them. Here's what's really different at a Garth show now, vs. before he retired: smart phones that shoot high-def video. Check out this one..."Friends In Low Places"

Congrats to Jay DeMarcus and his wife Ali. Their first child, daughter Madeline Leigh DeMarcus, was born Friday afternoon, a couple of weeks early but all is well. She weighed in at 6 pounds, 9 ounces, and already has her daddy wrapped around her little finger.

And congrats to Eddie Montgomery, who had successful surgery for prostate cancer this week. The doctor was so encouraged by the surgery's outcome that he says no further treatment is necessary, and Eddie has been told he's cancer-free. Scroll down for Eddie's feelings about it. His is the tweet of the day today.

In more of the dating saga between Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Swift, he went all-out to give her a normal movie night out. Well, sort of - he wanted to be sure they could enjoy "Tangled" without being interrupted by fans, so he rented out an entire movie theatre. The two of them were escorted into the theatre by security guards, who stood outside the doors while the movie played. No word on whether their popcorn was buttered or not...!

The tweet of the day is from Eddie Montgomery: "“I’m so happy I’m about reAdy to go streaking threw the snow!!! Hehehe”

Today's Country Tidbits

Tonight is the night for "Nashville Rising," the benefit concert put on by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. Tim's band, the Dance Hall Doctors, will serve as the house band for Toby Keith, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan, Billy Ray and Miley Cyrus, Amy Grant, Julie Roberts, ZZ Top and LeAnn Rimes. Brooks & Dunn were supposed to be on the show, but had to cancel this week's performances because Ronnie's fighting a sore throat. Though the flood happened two months ago, Tim and Faith started working on this show right away. “(Faith) You called the day of the flood…” (Tim)”Right at the day of the flood, we started working on what to do. And we knew there were other things going on, and we didn’t want to get in anybody’s way, of course, because it’s better to spread it all out to everybody can raise the most money.”

And speaking of Tim and Faith, they're planning a trip to Australia in September. It's going to be some work and some play - Tim will take his show on the road for the Australian fans, but they'll also make a family vacation out of it with a trip to the Great Barrier Reef for some diving and a solo flight over the outback for new pilot Tim.

Yesterday I told you about Jimmy Buffett's free concert in Gulf Shores, AL to promote tourism along the gulf coast in the wake of the oil disaster. The show has grown already - Kenny Chesney and Zac Brown will be part of the show, and it will air live on CMT, July 1st from 8 to 9:30 eastern. Tickets are available starting tomorrow at CMT.com. There's a limit of four tickets per person, and 35,000 are available for the beach concert.

Last night's Larry King Live was a telethon, and it featured Trace Adkins and Tim McGraw. Trace pointed out, "The day we stop using petroleum, you'd better find a way to make plastics, all kinds of medicines, the clothes and shoes we wear because all that stuff is made out of petroleum."

Also yesterday, Hank Williams Jr. strutted around a sound stage, shooting the opening song that the world knows him best for - "Are You Ready For Some Football?" This will be Bocephus' 22nd year as the voice of Monday Night Football's song.

Wanna have a pajama party at Dolly Parton's house? You can, but it's gonna cost you. On August 14th in Gatlinburg, TN, "An Evening of Elegance" will take place. It's a fund-raiser for the Dr. Robert F. Thomas Foundation, which supports health care in Sevier County, and one of the auction items is a sleep-over at Dolly's mansion, complete with a party in the evening and breakfast cooked by Dolly in the morning. Last year, the party for 11 went for $75,000. Tickets to the "Evening of Elegance" are $200 per person and are available by calling 865-446-9628.

Wanna win a trip to San Francisco? Jerrod Niemann, singer of "Lover, Lover" is offering a prize package that includes two nights in the Golden Gate city, tickets and meet & greet passes for his show there and a one-of-a-kind, "first on earth" CD plaque of his debut cd, "Judge Jerrod & the Hung Jury."

On the wedding front, it looks like Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton are planning on tying the knot next spring.

A benefit CD will be released on August 24th, featuring music from Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Rascal Flatts, Lady Antebellum, Darius Rucker, Trace Adkins, Reba, Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Rodney Atkins, Montgomery Gentry, Jypsi, Randy Houser and Big & Rich. The project, called "My Country: Smash Hits" also features a special message from President George W. Bush and benefits the Fisher House Foundation.

Psst...there's an early bird special going on for next year's BamaJam. Get tickets now, while they're as cheap as they'll ever be.

Yesterday, Dierks Bentley was on the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live, getting set to tape tonight's show. A power outage hit, and the studio was lit with only emergency lighting. Jimmy Kimmel, ever the creative guy, got out his laptop and the entire show was shot with it's webcam. Needless to say, Dierks' set was acoustic, but he says the show went great.

Congrats to Miranda Lambert, who's "The House That Built Me" is number 1 for the 4th week in a row.

New music out today includes Jaron and The Long Road to Love's "Getting Dressed in the Dark" and Mark Chesnutt's "Outlaw" which features classic outlaw country songs done Mark-style.

Tweet of the day comes from Zac Brown: "The details surrounding last night's events are stubborn in their fuzziness."

Happy birthday to Kris Kristofferson, who turns 76 today.