Alan Jackson has announced he has parted ways after 22 years with record label Arista Nashville. Jackson was the first artist signed to Arista Nashville after the label was founded in 1989.

I’ve had a great run with Arista, going all the way back to the beginning of my career.” I’ve gotten to work with some real great people along the way and we accomplished a lot. It just seems to me like the time may be right to change things up a bit and see what comes next.

Jackson is gearing up for the first leg of his 2011 tour with sold-out shows in Canada followed by his highly-anticipated first tour of Australia. He is currently writing and working on songs for his upcoming new album. No word on a future label yet.

Carrie Underwood walked away as the big winner with six awards at the Inaugural American Country Awards on Fox. The show featured some killer performances, but not a whole lot in the line of awards. So how did the show stack up to the other slew of country music award shows?

On the plus side, the ACAs were overall high energy and filled with performances. I think Trace Adkins was the perfect choice for the host. For one, he's as country as country can be and you don't get the feeling with him that he's wearing the cowboy hat just for show. He was also very witty and very funny. If the ACAs come back for a year number two, I hope they keep Trace around as the host.

Alan Jackson took the Greatest Hits Award at the ACAs for his body of work. He was on hand to perform a medley of his songs. Kind of a strange award category if you ask me, but Alan Jackson is surely deserving of anything called a Greatest Hits Award with his 34 number one hits!

Lady Antebellum comes up huge with six Grammy Award nominations. Lady A is up for:

Album of the Year for "Need You Now"
Record of the Year for "Need You Now"
Song of the Year for "Need You Now"
Best Country Album for "Need You Now"
Best Country Song for "Need You Now"
Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "Need You Now."

Here's the full list of nominations for country artists:

Best Female Country Vocal Performance
Satisfied - Jewel
The House That Built Me - Miranda Lambert
Swingin' - LeAnn Rimes
Temporary Home - Carrie Underwood
I'd Love To Be Your Last - Gretchen Wilson

You have to feel a little bad for Jason Aldean because his album just happened to hit the week after Taylor Swift's Speak Now just crushed the album charts. Aldean's new album, titled My Kinda Party, debuted with strong numbers, selling 192,973 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. It was not good enough though to topple Taylor, who sold another 318,701 copies of Speak Now. Bringing the total up to approximately 1,366,000. units sold.

Swift and Aldean also rank Number 1 and Number 2 on the Billboard 200 list, which includes all music genres. Sugarland comes in Number 3 on the list with their new release The Incredible Machine. So much for that country music not being popular thing. The top three releases are all in the country music camp!

Looking at the country songs chart we see the Zac Brown Band's song "As She's Walking Away," which features Alan Jackson, moves up from number 4 to number 1. I guess the CMA performance of the song paid off!

Last night the stars came out in Nashville for what is billed as Country's Biggest Night at the 44th Annual CMA Awards. Overall, they put on an entertaining show with some great performances, but there were also some that missed the mark a bit.

Carrie Underwood opened up the show on a high note, belting out her hit "Songs Like This" with Brad Paisley on guitar and Keith Urban on banjo. The song set a nice pace for the evening and flowed well into Carrie and Brad doing their opening dialog talking about, and joking about, the happenings of 2010. The pair has some great chemistry and really do a good job with their hosting duties.

My two favorite performances of the night came from Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift. Miranda did her best to channel the spirit of the Ramones during her performance of "That's The Way The World Goes Round," but yet still came through with that strong country twang and charm that she has. The song just absolutely rocks in a good way.

Ok, Martina McBride is a Kansas girl through and through but on the upcoming Loretta Lynn tribute album entitled "Coal Miner's Daughter" McBride belts out a duet of "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" with Alan Jackson. Loretta Lynn originally released the song as a duet with Conway Twitty back in 1973.

So who came up with the pairing for the song this time around? McBride did.

"Alan is one of my favorite country singers, and I have always loved his voice," she said. "He's very traditional, and I just thought he'd be perfect for this."

On why she chose to record the song "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" McBride recalled

"My dad was a huge Conway Twitty fan, so I grew up listening to Conway and Loretta."