The Lost Trailers photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

The Lost Trailers, best known for their 2008 hit “Holler Back,” will stop hollering as a group before the end of 2010.

The band announced on Friday that it would “finish out touring commitments” with the members moving on to separate careers by the end of the year. Nowhere in the release did the Trailers use the words “splitting” or “breaking up,” but a label representative confirmed that the band will indeed cease to exist once it closes out its current schedule. The latest date listed on the Trailers’ website is a Sept. 11 concert in South Jacksonville, Ill.

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Sara Evans photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

No matter what your history is or where you live, there are at least two things that a country fan shares with the stars: You like country music and you were born by a mother.

Mother’s Day comes up on Sunday, and many of the genre’s acts are thinking #151; and talking — about their moms. Kenny Chesney, Miranda Lambert, Sara Evans and more all have words of wisdom about their mother’s influence or the importance of the holiday:

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Jack Ingram photo courtesy of Big Machine Records.

Jack Ingram got some key face time in front of millions of viewers a week ago on the Academy of Country Music Awards when he enlisted Dierks Bentley for an amped-up version of “Barbie Doll.”

The song has never appeared high on the national charts, where Jack’s landed such singles as “Wherever You Are,” “Barefoot And Crazy” and “Love You.” But “Barbie” has received a huge response in his live shows, and from Jack’s perspective on the stage, it’s become one of the key pieces on his set list.

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Love And Theft's Eric Gunderson married Emily Emily Hagar in a private ceremony at Hazel Path Mansion in Hendersonville, Tennessee on Saturday, April 3, 2010. Photo by Elle DuVal Hobbs bespeshl.com, courtesy of Lyric Street Records.

Eric Gunderson, one-third of the new band Love And Theft, became the first member to tie the knot this weekend, marrying Emily Hagar in a private ceremony Saturday at Hazel Path Mansion in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville.

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Jamey Johnson photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Jamey Johnson’s 2008 album That Lonesome Song was a winner, earning nominations for Album of the Year in both the CMA Awards and the Grammys.

The track that drew the most attention from the album, “In Color,” owed its storyline to a black-and-white photograph, and Jamey’s next album will likely carry that theme forward, though it’s unclear if Jamey intended to link the two projects. He told Alabama outlet Our Prattville that the new album, titled The Guitar Song, should be out in June or July. And it’s taken on an interesting shape.

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Randy Houser photo courtesy of Universal Records South.

If you want an update on where country music’s been and where it’s going, you only need to put two events from the past week into perspective: Tuesday’s announcement of the 2010 Country Music Hall of Fame inductees and Friday’s New Faces Show at Nashville’s Country Radio Seminar.

Don Williams, the most recent hitmaker among the four Hall of Fame additions, was often noted for a quiet stage show. He simply stood at the microphone and sang, and his success relied exclusively on the warmth of his gentle demeanor and the thoughtful messages that dominated his understated songs.

The New Faces Show demonstrated the bigger-is-better philosophy that’s dominated concerts ever since Garth Brooks turned up in arenas two decades ago. From the outset, Love And Theft and Randy Houser — the first two acts in a five-artist lineup — cranked the volume and the tempo in a slickly produced show meant to confirm for radio programmers that they are indeed playing the right new performers as they compete for listeners’ ears.

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Keith Urban photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

Nearly three weeks after a Jan. 12 earthquake destroyed large swatches of Haiti, the response from country music’s community is heartening. Keith Urban, Taylor Swift, Pam Tillis, Big Kenny, Restless Heart and Toby Keith are just some of the artists who found ways to get involved.

They’ve donated their time, their voices and their money, and in one particular instance, one unintended result was a confirmation that the recording industry has crossed a barrier as it continues to evolve in the digital age. Taylor and Keith were both featured on the multi-network special Help For Haiti Now, which was immediately released as a digital-only album. It quickly sold more than 170,000 copies and came in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 all-genre albums chart. It marks the first time in history that the top album in the country could not be purchased in a physical format.

Here’s a summary of the ways country stars have reached out to help:

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Tim McGraw photo by Danny Clinch, courtesy of Curb Records.

There are five Southern voices in the home of Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, and it looks like that’s the limit. Tim, who occupies the cover of the newest edition of People magazine, originally had more kids in mind, but with three girls already in the family, there’s not much thought of expansion.

“We talked about it once,” he says in the story. “We even have names for boys. I would love to have a boy also, but if we start again now, we’re going to be old when they’re gone. We started out wanting five [kids], and life just…got busy.”

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