Emmylou Harris photo by Rocky Schenck, courtesy of Nonesuch Records.

Dave Rawlings grabbed four nominations to lead the rootsy field as Emmylou Harris and Todd Snider announced the nominees for the Americana Awards & Honors Wednesday at the W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville.

Dave’s nominations came for music he recorded at the historic RCA Studio B with a band shaped out of members from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Bright Eyes and Old Crow Medicine Show. The Machine’s A Friend Of A Friend is a finalist for Album of the Year, and “Ruby” — co-written with Dave’s frequent collaborator Gillian Welch — is in the running for Song of the Year. Dave is up for Instrumentalist and the Machine is a finalist for Duo Group.

Ray Wylie Hubbard rode his cleverly titled album A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C) to a trio of nominations. Ryan Bingham, whose “The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart” has already won a Golden Globe and an Oscar award, picked up three as well.

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With the Olympics in full swing, network prime-time TV has gotten pretty bland. You either get winter sports on NBC or you mostly see reruns on the other channels — all the more reason you should be watching GAC!

But all returns to normalcy next week once the Winter Games are over, and several country stars — Rascal Flatts, Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley — will be right in the thick of it. Flatts and Carrie have acting roles on tap, while Brad will perform in a talk-show episode that has a little connection to history.

On tap next week:

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Toby Keith photo courtesy of Show Dog Nashville.

Toby Keith’s new American Ride album is debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200.

But while the public thinks of Toby as a recording artist and entertainer, he’s also quite successful as a songwriter. In fact, on Sunday the Nashville Songwriters Association International will recognize him as the Songwriter/Artist of the Decade, and that honor is forefront in his mind at the moment.

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Rosanne Cash photo courtesy of myspace.com/rosannecash.

When Rosanne Cash’s album The List is released on Tuesday, it will unveil only a portion of a much larger treasure.

When she was a teenager, Rosanne went on tour with her father, Country Music Hall of Fame member Johnny Cash, and he wrote out a list of the 100 most important country songs for her to learn if she intended to become an artist.

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