Just Friends? Jake and Carey's Night Out in Nashville

Wonderwall, Tuesday, February 8, 2011, 1:04pm (PST)

By Kat Giantis

Judging by Jake Gyllenhaal's flirt-a-palooza at the Golden Globes, he's ready to belly-flop back into the dating pool following his ill-fated hookup with Taylor Swift. But are rumors that he's focusing his baby blues on Carey Mulligan all wet or not?

The pair, who co-starred in the 2009 drama "Brothers," raised eyebrows last week when they were spotted together at events in New York and Nashville.

On Thursday, spies saw them chitchatting at the off-Broadway opening of "Three Sisters," starring Jake's sister, Maggie, and her husband, Peter Sarsgaard, who co-starred with Carey in "An Education."

Two days later, Gyllenhaal, 30, and Mulligan, 25, turned up in Nashville, otherwise known as Swift's hometown, where they hit a private concert at a house party hosted by local musician Mike Harris.

The duo, along with about two hundred other music fans, crowded into an apparently "cramped, dark and threadbare basement" to watch such acts as the Grammy-nominated Mumford & Sons, who joined the stars for dinner at City House earlier in the evening.

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According to Metromix, the audience left Jake and Carey in peace, which might be why they later felt comfortable enough to join a few dozen other folks in an upstairs bedroom for a late-night jam session led by Harris, Mat Kearney and members of the Old Crow Medicine Show.

In a grainy video from the gathering, Gyllenhaal (in a baseball hat) and Mulligan can be seen singing along to a raucous version of "Amazing Grace." Eyewitnesses say the actor even picked up a guitar and started strumming. The fun lasted into the wee hours of the morning, despite the pair saying they had an early flight.

So, does grooving to banjo-flavored alt-country rock in some guy's dingy Nashville basement mean a love connection is a-brewing? Not according to one source, who tosses out the f-word -- friends.

"They may have been together, but they aren't together," a Gyllenhaal pal insists to E! Online. "[Carey and Jake] have a number of mutual friends. These same friends know Peter and Maggie, and I'm telling you, Carey just happened to be in Nashville, as well. I'm pretty sure she's dating somebody else."

That "somebody else" is rumored to be fellow British thespian Eddie Redmayne, with whom she was snapped strolling arm-in-arm around New York earlier this month.

That outing came two months after Mulligan was seen in the company actor Tom Sturridge, and four months after she called it quits with "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" leading man Shia LaBeouf after a year of coupledom.

Jake, for his part, was last seen in Nashville in late January, when he reportedly winged in to get some closure with Taylor following the end of their two-month, tabloid-topping romance.

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