George Strait photo by Danny Clinch, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Easter falls this year on April 4, and if that holiday motivates a little spiritual consideration, a couple of new music compilations have been put together to aid your connection to the Almighty.

One’s a country-specific collection that rolls George Strait, Keith Urban and Josh Turner in among a dozen hitmakers. The other drops Carrie Underwood into an ongoing pop series that places her alongside the likes of Daughtry, Natasha Bedingfield and The Fray.

The country-centered collection, Sunday In The Country: 12 Inspiring Hits From Today’s Top Country Artists, is being released by New Haven Records with proceeds benefiting the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Diamond Rio, Trace Adkins and Tracy Lawrence all contribute tracks to the project, which extends a country-gospel tradition.

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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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Josh Turner photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Josh Turner’s new album Haywire got off to a great start, selling 85,000 copies in its first week to land at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and at No. 5 on the all-genre Billboard 200. And that news comes as the CD’s first single, “Why Don’t We Just Dance,” holds steady at No. 1 on the Top Country Songs list.

Josh may be hot in the present moment, but part of his success has comes by learning from the past. Randy Travis was a symbolic mentor for him during his formative years, and he’s worked with such previous hitmakers as Trisha Yearwood, Ralph Stanley and Diamond Rio to build his career since he started recording.

But Josh was getting an education about artistry and the music business long before he made his way from South Carolina to Nashville. The stories of established artists can be found in many settings, and Josh looked to those people’s histories to pick up creative nuances or even motivation.

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Joe Nichols recently visited troops on US military bases in Kuwait and Iraq. His trip was filmed for the GAC special, Joe Nichols: My Military Diary, premiering Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009 at 10 p.m. Eastern.

#7 on GAC’s Top Stories of 2009 |  View all »

Seven years into post-9/11 wars that continue to stretch America’s psyche and its public coffers, President Obama’s agonizing decision over how to proceed was one of the most analyzed topics in the national news during 2009.

Whether they approved of the wars or not, country’s stars continued to support the troops whose jobs demand they wage them. Joe Nichols, Toby Keith, Craig Morgan and the Charlie Daniels Band were among the numerous acts who made it a point to go overseas and play for the men and women in uniform. They went to the Middle East, to European bases and to Korea — and plenty more artists found time to give shows for the troops at U.S. bases.

In a couple of instances, GAC brought the experience to you with the specials Stars For Stripes: Wounded Warriors Return and Joe Nichols: My Military Diary.

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Billy Currington photo by Danny Clinch, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

#9 on GAC’s Top Stories of 2009 |  View all »

People, Billy Currington noted in his award-nominated story song, are crazy. Sometimes Mother Nature is, too, and she left Billy black and blue in the most shocking of a bunch of country-music health stories that made headlines in 2009.

Billy’s weather disaster — which occurred in Camrose, Alberta, on Aug. 1 — was a doozy. A major storm toppled the outdoor stage. One fan died when a speaker fell on her, Billy was hospitalized with a concussion, and bass player Alex Stevens needed surgery for a severed artery after he was pinned for 30 minutes beneath the stage.

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

#10 on GAC’s Top Stories of 2009 |  View all »

You can count on seeing country music in certain places on television. It’s a 24/7 proposition on GAC. And the daily talk shows — including “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” and “The Late Show With David Letterman” — obviously need a good smattering of country acts to fill out the music slots on their programs.

But country artists did an excellent job in 2009 in grabbing a larger share of acting roles and musical moments on TV and in the movies. Led by Tim McGraw’s part as Sandra Bullock’s husband in The Blind Side, by Taylor Swift’s TV acting debut on “CSI” and by the bevy of country stars who appeared on the platinum soundtrack to Hannah Montana: The Movie, the genre was well represented in the visual media in the last 12 months.

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Jason Michael Carroll photo by David Bean, courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

To be a female celebrity is to undergo a constant evaluation of the latest hair style. Kellie Pickler’s shift from blonde to red and back to blonde? All over the ‘Net. Carrie Underwood’s new ‘do on the CMAs? Lots of folks registered opinions. Taylor Swift’s newly straightened locks? In some quarters, it gets more hits than stories about health care.

Hair is sort of a thing with male singer Jason Michael Carroll these days. When he came to prominence with a mop that wasn’t all that different from, say, a 1988 version of Motley Crue’s Vince Neil, Jason’s rock-star image — enhanced by the Steven Tyler-bred scarves hanging from his mic stand — cut a unique figure in country circles.

With the release of his Growing Up Is Getting Old album earlier this year, he’d mowed it all to a more manageable level. But when he hit the stage at Nashville’s Exit/In on Thursday, Jason evinced an even leaner cut. The back of his hair barely brushes the bottom of his collar, and the worldly soul patch is completely buzzed. The new JMC is cleaner, less brooding and… well, if you didn’t know he was born in 1978, you’d swear he was only 22.

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Dolly Parton photo courtesy of Dolly Parton Management.

The list is out, the tickets to Los Angeles are being bought, and the country stars in the running for 2010 Grammy Awards are all coming to grips with the reality that their work is being recognized by their peers among the year’s best.

Kenny Chesney’s duet with Mac McAnally, Dolly Parton’s Broadway cast album and Lady Antebellum’s pair of nominations have all spurred gratitude and joy. Tracy Lawrence scored his first-ever Grammy nomination, Jim Lauderdale is a bluegrass finalist — and also had a hand in a couple of other nominated projects: He wrote two songs on George Strait’s Twang album, and he was a member of Elvis Costello’s supporting band on Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. Keith Urban collected four nods, and Taylor Swift appeared eight times on the list.

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Photo courtesy of Tracy Byrd.

At least three years after shooting began, the independent movie that gave Lee Ann Womack and Tracy Byrd their first significant acting roles debuts this weekend in a limited number of public theaters.

It premieres Friday , KBMT-TV reported, in Beaumont, Texas, where much of the film was shot. It was featured earlier this year in the Nashville Film Festival and has also screened at the Austin Film Festival.

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Tracy Lawrence photo courtesy of Rocky Comfort Records.

That swine flu virus that’s tapping out vaccine supplies and landing people in the hospital across the U.S. has hit Nashville. Music City ran through its first shipment of the vaccine in a scant two days, and even before that, Tracy Lawrence became one of country music’s first victims.

“For five or six weeks, I was pretty sick,” he told The Norman Transcript in Oklahoma. “I had H1N1 and pneumonia. It hit me a little harder because I’m asthmatic. It knocked me down pretty hard.”

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