‘American Idol’ runner-up Bo Bice has signed a recording contract with 19 Recordings/RCA, the official label of the ‘Idol’ top two. No release date was announced for the rocker’s first album, although you can now buy the single to “Inside Your Heaven”, backed with “Vehicle” featuring Richie Sambora on guitar.

A brain aneurysm suffered the first week of April hasn’t proved enough to keep veteran Canadian rocker Neil Young down – he’s already back in the studio recording the follow-up to 2003’s ‘Greendale’. Surgery for the aneurysm had kept Young off his scheduled appearance on the 2005 Juno Awards from his hometown of Winnipeg, and out of the Nashville studio he’d been recording in. Young’s sister Astrid posted a short point on her website: “He’s feeling good, has everything under control and is back in the saddle.”

How will this affect the reunion tour? Only a week after being outed as a bong smoker in the National Enquirer, Backstreet Boy Nick Carter has been arrested for driving under the influence of booze this past Saturday. He was pulled over for an unnamed “traffic violation” and failed a sobriety test. Check out his mugshot at The Smoking Gun.

For the second time in their storied career Minneapolis’ The Jayhawks have called it a day. The Gram Parsons influenced band first appeared in 1985 and put together a series of strong albums, one of which – ‘Hollywood Town Hall’ – appeared on both Spin and Rolling Stone’s lists of the 1990s most essential albums. After the their follow-up, and most financially successful album, ‘Tomorrow the Green Grass’ Mark Olson left the band to pursue a career with his wife, Victoria Williams, leaving The Jayhawks to announce their first shortened retirement. They soon resurfaced with Olson’s singing and writing partner, Gary Louris, at the helm. Their latest album, ‘Rainy Day Music’, was a critically acclaimed return to the folk sound of their heyday, but sold only 175,000 copies. Olson and Louris had recently joined together for a tour, and it was at a sold out Madison, Wisconsin show on Saturday that Louris noted the end had come once more. “I don’t think we’re going to do anything else,” Louris told the Star Tribune. “We felt like we’ve done that enough. Everybody just wants to do something else. We haven’t completely closed the door, but … I’d say it’s dead.” Louris will next surface as a songwriter with the Dixie Chicks on their forthcoming album, and plans to enter the world of record production.

The debut album of ‘American Idol’ winner Fantasia Barrino has sold a commanding 850,000 copies in the first week, but the number has fallen well short of sales by previous Idol winners. The failure to increase sales amidst increases in the program’s viewing audience has been a bone of contention between Idol producers and executives at Arista Records, who release the Idol winner albums. Barrino herself noted that the TV show is free to watch “and a lot of people just don’t go out and buy records.”