Every once in a while I'll find a story that is worthy of sharing in its entirety. Recently Brian Mansfield, at USA Today published a special on the Zac Brown Band. The band shares how it felt to win the Grammy for new artist in 2010, collaborating with other artists, plans to feed their fans at shows, and why they'd like a repeat Grammy win.

To read the story in its entirety be sure and visit USAtoday.com.

NASHVILLE — For the Zac Brown Band's Chris Fryar, the magnitude of winning a new-artist Grammy last year came during the acceptance speech, when he looked into the Staples Center audience in Los Angeles and saw one of the category's previous winners.

"We were standing up there, thanking everybody that we had to thank, and I looked down at Ringo Starr sitting in the front row," says the drummer for the Georgia-based band. "He's won a best-new-artist Grammy, and there we were accepting one. It was a trip."

Since winning that award last January Brown, 32; Fryar, 40; and the band's four other musicians — guitarist Coy Bowles, 31; multi-instrumentalist Clay Cook, 32; fiddle player Jimmy De Martini, 34; and bassist John Driskell Hopkins, 39 — have gone about showing just how much they deserved the accolade.

CMT special CMT Artists of the Year aired last night but you can watch it in it's entirety here (above) or online at CMT.com.

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

We all know that Zac Brown can sing and pick, but did you know that he's also quite the chef? This time of year is a special one for Zac, and he likes to spend his time in the kitchen cooking up his famous Thanksgiving feast. A masterpiece of food that he would "put up against anyone's spread."

The weekend after Thanksgiving Zac and his wife Shelly host their annual Zac Brown Band crew / friend / family feast full of southern home cooking with a twist.

"I always smoke a whole rib-eye instead of doing turkey because everybody's turkey'd out by then," Zac told The Boot. "We smoke some serious meat on those days; whole rib eyes that have been injected, rubbed and smoked all night long."

Want to try one of Zac's recipes for yourself? You can find his Campfire Chili recipe on Parade Magazine's site here: Zac's Campfire Chili

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!

Taylor Swift and Kid Rock, both off performances at the 44th Annual CMA Awards, will both be performing on the upcoming American Music Awards. The show will air on Sunday, November 21st on ABC.

Taylor Swift is up for Favorite Country Music Female Artist along with Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood.

The other country music awards on the show include Favorite Country Music Male Artist which has nominees of Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan and Brad Paisley. Favorite Country Music Band, Duo or Group which has nominees of Zac Brown Band, Lady Antebellum and Rascal Flatts. Favorite Country Music Album which has nominees of Jason Aldean's Wide Open, Lady Antebellum's Need You Now and Carrie Underwood's Play On.

Kid Rock will be releasing his new album, Born Free, on Tuesday, November 16th.

For more information and to vote please visit: http://abc.go.com/shows/american-music-awards/vote

Brad Paisley is the CMA's 2010 Entertainer of the Year. So much for all of the controversy leading up to the Awards regarding the new blood in the Entertainer category. We had Lady Antebellum saying that their nomination was extremely premature and Miranda Lambert saying her nomination was weirding her out since she just started headlining tours this year. Zac Brown Band was also up for, and won, New Artist of the Year, so the only two veterans nominated were Paisley and Keith Urban.

It was Paisley's first win in the Entertainer of the Year category, one he had been nominated for every single year since 2005. He gave a heartfelt acceptance speech and thanked all country fans for not only supporting him but everyone else in the industry as well. Paisley was humble, recalling something Little Jimmy Dickens once told him. "When you see a turtle on a fence post, you know that he had some help getting there. I feel like a turtle on on a fence post."

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.

Watching the awards show is always exciting and this years show was no exception. For the third straight year Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood hosted the program and their quick witted banter was actually entertaining to say the least.

It's always fun to see who performs, who presents and how bent out of shape the fans get about it all. We all want our favorite artists to perform and when they aren't chosen things can get pretty heated out there on twitter and facebook and the like. I get a good chuckle out of that. Anyway, this years performers were all pretty darn good and nothing too unexpected took place.

At the end of the night these were the winners:

Musician of the Year – Mac McAnally

Music Video of the Year – “The House That Built Me” Miranda Lambert, Director: Trey Fanjoy

Vocal Event of the Year – “Hillbilly Bone” Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins

Single of the Year – “Need You Now” Lady Antebellum, Producers: Paul Worley and Lady Antebellum

Song of the Year – “The House That Built Me” Songwriters: Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin

New Artist of the Year – Zac Brown Band