Kellie Pickler photo by Tony Baker, courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

Don’t miss Kellie Pickler’s appearance on this weekend’s episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Sunday on ABC at 8 p.m. Eastern. Kellie went to Beavercreek, Ohio and helped the James Terpenning family. James is a wheelchair sports champion and also mentors disabled Iraqi War veterans.

While in Beavercreek, Kellie performed and even got in on the demolition action, wielding a sledgehammer like a pro.

Kellie recently chatted with GACTV.com about the experience. Click on the mp3 below to hear her interview!

Trish Townsend, a stylist for many of your favorite country stars — including Carrie Underwood — recently visited our studio to share her tips on how to have the best ensemble at the party:

The 43rd Annual CMA Awards show hosted by Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley airs on Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.  Check out GAC’s CMA Awards Show section for complete coverage, photos, videos, trivia and a downloadable ballot.

LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON -- Episode 140 -- Pictured: (l-r) Taylor Swift, Jimmy Fallon -- NBC Photo: Dana Edelson

You’ve probably heard by now, Taylor Swift is set to pull double duty as both the host and musical guest this weekend on NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL).  Taylor joins a short list of superstars including Sting, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake that have filled both shoes on the show.  The last time a female country artist was tapped to both host and perform was Dolly Parton, 20 years ago.

Last Monday night, Taylor made a special guest appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and got some great advice from the SNL vet.

“Be nice to the writers…bring them sandwiches, pizzas and stuff, whatever you can do to put the writers on your side,” advised Jimmy.   He went on to reassure Taylor that she is going to do just fine.  “It’s a dream for people to do it, when it’s over you just want to do it again, it’s that exciting. You’re gonna do great!”

Tune in to SNL this Saturday on NBC at 11:30 EST to catch the full show.   Watch Taylor’s full interview with Jimmy Fallon here:

Taylor is GAC’s Artist of the Month.  Check out all things Taylor including her new CD/DVD, Fearless Platinum Edition, watch her entire collection of music videos, browse hundreds of photos and more!

Jake Owen photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

Jake Owen’s “Eight Second Ride” uses a rodeo phrase for a sexy come-on that has his latest video at No. 18 on GAC’s Top 20 Country Countdown, but some real rodeo pros join Suzanne Alexander from this week’s CBR (Championship Bull Riding) finale in Kansas City.

Suzanne checks in with a bunch of bull-riding cowboys — including Jarrod Craig, Ardie Maier, retired champ Gary Leffew and the Kansas City winner, Hugo Pedrero — as she works through the biggest videos in country music.

The “Eight Second Ride” video meanwhile is helping Jake buck his way through the national singles charts. It reached the Top 20 this week in the USA Today Mediabase country singles list. Jake is hoping he has reason to romp to the stage on Wednesday during the 43rd annual Country Music Association Awards. He’s a finalist for New Artist of the Year along with Randy Houser, Jamey Johnson, Darius Rucker and the Zac Brown Band.

Top 20 Country Countdown counts down the week’s top country videos from No. 20 to No. 1 as voted by viewers on each week on GACTV.com. A new countdown premieres every Friday at 8 p.m. ET on GAC and airs again Saturdays at 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. ET; Sundays at 1 p.m. ET; and Mondays at 10 a.m. ET. Viewers can vote for their favorite videos, as well as purchase Top 20 artists’ albums and ringtones at GACTV.com.

Click here to preview each song on our Top 20 list and download the ones you want!

THIS WEEK’S CHART:

1. Carrie Underwood “Cowboy Casanova”
2. Lady Antebellum “Need You Now”
3. Kellie Pickler “Didn’t You Know How Much I Loved You”
4. Miranda Lambert “White Liar”
5. Luke Bryan “Do I”
6. Reba McEntire “Consider Me Gone”
7. Keith Urban “Only You Can Love Me This Way”
8. Chris Young “Gettin’ You Home”
9. Trace Adkins “All I Ask For Anymore”
10. Taylor Swift “Fifteen”
11. Josh Turner “Why Don’t We Just Dance”
12. George Strait “Living For The Night”
13. Billy Currington “People Are Crazy”
14. Toby Keith “American Ride”
15. Tim McGraw “Southern Voice”
16. Martina McBride “I Just Call You Mine”
17. Jason Michael Carroll “Hurry Home”
18. Jake Owen “Eight Second Ride”
19. Sugarland “Keep You”
20. Jason Aldean “Big Green Tractor”

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.”

Busy indeed. Tim and Faith have kept their music careers intact, and Tim is currently active as an actor as well. His Southern Voice album came out last month; his next film, The Blind Side, arrives Nov. 20; and his next tour, featuring opening acts Lady Antebellum and the Lost Trailers, begins Feb. 11 in Omaha.

He’s living well, and he says Faith is a big reason why.

“Faith saved my life in a lot of ways — from myself more than anything,” he notes. “I can go down a dark road sometimes, when you’re not feeling good about yourself, and she pulls me out. My wife makes me a better man.”

The new edition of People appears on newsstands Friday.

Look for Tim to perform in Wednesday’s telecast of the 43rd annual Country Music Association Awards. Among the other acts slated: George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Jason Aldean, Taylor Swift, Keith Urban and co-hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood.

GAC is the only cable network where you can see encore airings of the CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock concert special.  The special, filmed at the 2009 CMA Music Festival, features Kenny Chesney, Taylor Swift, Brad Paisley, Martina McBride, Lady Antebellum, Sugarland, Trace Adkins, Brooks & Dunn, Dierks Bentley, Jake Owen, Zac Brown Band and more.  3-hours of non-stop music filmed live in Nashville, TN at the LP Field stadium.   And if that’s not enough reason to tune-in, it gets better…

Watch GAC’s encore airing of CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock on November 7th and 8th and you’ll find out how to get registered for a chance to win a guitar autographed by various nominees and winners attending this year’s 43rd Annual CMA Awards Show.  Hint: Have your mobile phone nearby and be ready do some texting!  Official Rules.

Click here for complete list of airtimes.

Zac Brown Band photo courtesy of Atlantic Records.

For the second week in a row the Zac Brown Band is sitting at the top of the Billboard Country chart with their third No. 1 hit, “Toes.”

Last night I tuned in to watch the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and the Zac Brown Band was the featured musical guest.  And as would be expected, they performed their hit “Toes,” the original, un-edited version where they use the word “ass” in the chorus.   Yes, that’s right – they sang the word “ass” on national TV.

Earlier in the day I was listening to a local radio station here in Nashville and heard the same song.  But that version was the edited, PG-version that replaced “ass” with “toes.”    This switcheroo makes the song sound really silly…”got my toes in the sand, toes in the water…”  How can they be in two places at once?

So it got me to thinking, is “ass” really a bad word when used in a such an innocent way, describing some downtime on a beach somewhere?  There’s a long list of naughty words that no doubt should be “bleeped” or totally omitted, but is “ass” really one of them?

What side of the fence are you sitting on?  Leave a comment below and let me know.

Click here to watch the video for “Toes” »

The 43rd Annual CMA Awards show hosted by Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley airs on Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.   Check out GAC’s CMA Awards Show section for complete coverage, photos, videos, trivia and a downloadable ballot.

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.

This summer, Joe Nichols took his first trip to the Middle East to perform for American troops serving in the nation’s two wars, and the journey is captured on a GAC special, Joe Nichols: My Military Diary.

It’s a visit he’d thought about for some time. Joe has an affinity for the work U.S. soldiers do, and he’s convinced that had things gone in a different way earlier in his life, he might well have ended up an enlisted man.

“I always felt like that was the most honorable job there is,” Joe notes. “I don’t think it pays tremendously. I mean, you have to seriously love somethin’ bigger than yourself to do that job. Any time that happens, any time people have that kind of heart, to sacrifice for somethin’ bigger than yourself, it just grabs me.”

The most obvious sacrifices made in war surround the critical danger that a soldier faces every day, but there’s another toll that’s taken, too. Servicemen and women spend months away from their homes and their families, and that makes for plenty of loneliness and uncertainty. That sacrifice is one of the things that impresses Joe most.

“I don’t think people are as worried about gettin’ shot at as they are just losing control upstairs of their purpose in life,” he says. “In the part of the world that I visited in Iraq, they’re isolated. A lot of ‘em have gone through divorces because they’re over there so long, which baffles me that the situation must call for a divorce. When you divorce somebody that’s 7,000 miles away doin’ a very, very difficult job — that you’ll leave them at their most vulnerable moment, I mean it just baffles me [how difficult] the situation might be.”

Joe Nichols: My Military Diary debuts at 10 p.m. ET Sunday on GAC. His latest album, Old Things New, was released last week. And next year he’ll have the lead role in a Broadway remake of the George Strait picture Pure Country.

Click here to watch Joe’s video for “An Old Friend of Mine.”

Blake Shelton photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Nashville.

Blake Shelton’s a good person, but he no longer feels the need to always be “Mr. Nice Guy.”  He tells The Tennessean that one thing’s responsible for his “say-what-you-think” demeanor.

“The truth is I finally got all my (expletive) paid off,” he tells the paper. “Once you get everything paid off, it’s like, ‘(Who cares) if you all don’t like it.’ I’ve got something to say. I think what’s cool about it is, and has been in the last few months with Twitter, is really not being afraid anymore.”

If you haven’t read Blake’s tweets (follow him at @blakeshelton), you’re missing out. He posts daily and never fails to get a rise out of somebody — and usually, it’s someone from the animal rights organization, PETA. Blake’s longtime fans can almost hear him grinning with each barb he tosses at PETA.

Blake’s sarcastic sense of humor is on full display in his new duet with Trace Adkins, “Hillbilly Bone.” (Watch it below!)

“Trace Adkins is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life,” says Blake ”I think once people get over their initial fear of him as a monster, (they’ll realize) he’s really dry. He has a really kind of grumpy sense of humor that I just worship. He’s awesome.”

Blake and Trace shot the “Hillbilly Bone” video at Nashville’s Stock-Yard restaurant, and he tells the paper that during filming, he laughed more than he has in “15 years.” The two play up the “redneck in a fancy restaurant” stereotype as they stare at the weird food on their plates and drink copious amounts of alcohol. Trace’s “moonshine” jug was empty — but Blake’s wine bottle was not.

“They asked me to drink out of a bottle and really look like a redneck,” he says. “I think I went through three bottles of wine on my own. I was pretty drunk there by the end.”

Blake tells The Tennessean that “Hillbilly Bone” is a good indicator of what fans will hear on his next record, which he’s recording now.

“One thing we’re doing that we probably haven’t done is showcase the … ‘I don’t give a (expletive) if you like it or not’ attitude,” he says. “It’s puzzled me why country artists have to be so politically correct. I mean I’m not a politician. If I’m going to sing about drinking and raising hell then you have to know deep down inside that’s what I do. I’m just more open about it lately, and it’s amazing the reaction to that. People either love me or hate me. But it’s the first time they are noticing, which is awesome for me. I’m loving it. I can show you some people on Twitter that hate me. They are probably tree-hugging, card-carrying members of PETA that can kiss my (expletive) anyway.”