Well, better late than never: We're at the tail end of season three, and the city of Raleigh has finally found a title sponsor for the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater. Henceforth, the 5,600-capacity outdoor concert venue will be known as the Red Hat Amphitheater, as sponsored by open-source software company Red Hat (a downtown Raleigh tenant since 2011).

The deal is effective immediately and runs for five years, into September 2016. According to Doug Grissom with the Raleigh Convention Center, Red Hat is paying $235,000 a year, which comes to $1.175 million over the course of the deal.

Since opening in June 2010, the amphitheater has hosted big acts including Mumford & Sons, Wiz Khalifa and My Morning Jacket. There are seven events still to go this season, highlighted by Florence + the Machine on Sept. 21 and Gotye on Oct. 1.

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RALEIGH – Jim James, psychedelic-shaman frontman of the Kentucky rock band My Morning Jacket, has this...thing he does with his voice that’s rather remarkable. It’s a special effect that’s hard to describe, because phrases like “high lonesome wail” seem inadequate. And it’s not even something as simple as projection. It’s almost the opposite of that, in fact.

When James really lets loose, it feels as if he somehow opens up a hole in the universe and lets it pour through his voice, producing a howl that seems to emanate from the coldest, furthest reaches of deep space. To his credit, James doesn’t overdo this effect. But when he breaks it out, it’s amazing.

Sunday night found My Morning Jacket playing the final date of its tour at the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater. Between the headliner and opening act Band of Horses, it was a generous dose of American roots rock from the beard-and-gimmie-cap division. The hairy part of that description especially goes for James. You heard him fine; but between his thick beard and mane of hair, it was almost impossible to get a good look at his face.

Following an agreeable hour from Band of Horses, My Morning Jacket came onstage accompanied by waves of trippy ambient sound effects and kicked off with “Rollin’ Back,” a song that has evolved a great deal since the 2003 studio version. It’s still as spacy as ever, but with lots more of a hard-rock pulse.

Classic-rock overtones were definitely the order of the day, especially on the songs from My Morning Jacket’s most recent effort “Circuital” – an album whose overall vibe is reminiscent of The Who circa “Quadrophenia.” Over the course of two-plus hours, the band variously evoked Pink Floyd (with lasers throbbing at seizure-inducing paces), the Grateful Dead and that fictional band from the ’70s-rock movie “Almost Famous.”

Jerry Garcia, the late Grateful Dead icon, would have loved this bunch. Completing the Dead-friendly feeling, there were a few “twirlers” dancing about in the crowd, acting out My Morning Jacket’s extended jams. For all the instrumental fireworks, however, almost every song proceeded at a deliberatepace. The occasional jam that accelerated to anything faster than mid-tempo was rare enough to be startling.

With the songs flowing into each other seamlessly, there was no between-song chatter to speak of. Underrated as a guitarist, James got in some pretty good licks on his Flying V guitar and the entire band played quite well. But James’ voice was still the main draw, especially when he’d hit that high, spooky place and evoke choirs of unearthly angels.

It even worked at quieter volumes, like the acoustic encore version of “Wonderful (The Way I Feel)” with Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell out for a vocal cameo. The rest of Band of Horses also joined the headliner onstage during the encore for a rousing cover of George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity.”

But it wasn’t.

Word came down on Thursday about the RBC Center's name change, which got me to wondering: Will the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater have a title sponsor by the time its 2012 concert season commences next spring? Roger Krupa, who oversees the venue for the city, says he's still working on it. But it's pretty much stuck in the same stalemate ever since the Bud Light name got derailed last year.

"I'm out there trying," Krupa said Friday afternoon. "I have some targets, been out there talking to people. But it's a really hard environment right now to try and get someone to put $300,000 into something like this. We'll see how I do."

Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater has picked up a nice honor within the concert industry, nominated for best new major venue in Pollstar magazine's 2011 Concert Industry Awards. In its first full season, the 6,000-capacity DRA had a solid year with 23 paid ticketed shows drawing more than 76,000 people, including big crowds for everything from rapper Wiz Khalifa to British Americana hitmakers Mumford & Sons.

Alas, for all that, there's still no title sponsor. Maybe DRA will have one by the time Pollstar announces its winner in February. Meantime, here is this year's show-by-show recap:

Wiz Khalifa -- 5,608
Pretty Lights -- 2,472
Thirty Seconds to Mars -- 3,350
Mumford & Sons -- 5,390
Decemberists -- 3,521
O.A.R. -- 2,317
Furthur -- 4,538
Bon Iver -- 3,737
Goo Goo Dolls -- 2,323
Ke$ha -- 5,830
Slightly Stoopid -- 1,832
Umphrey's McGee -- 1,361
Sebastian Bach -- 1,167
Lupe Fiasco -- 2,183
Fleet Foxes -- 2,978
Widespread Panic -- 3,973
Widespread Panic -- 5,470
Better Than Ezra -- 1,255
Rusted Root -- 2,133
DayGlow -- 4,250
Ed Kowalczyk -- 1,159
Vince Neil -- 1,640
Wilco -- 3,850
Darius Rucker -- 4,322

As for DRA's larger cousin, 20,000-capacity Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek, there's good news and bad news about its season attendance. The bad news is that there just aren't many acts out there capable of drawing that many folks anymore. The good news, however, is that Walnut Creek managed to book a fair quantity of them this year. So while it only had 16 shows, 11 of them drew five-figure crowds. Add it all up, and total attendance was more than 218,000 -- good for a healthy per-show average of 13,000-plus.

More than ever, mainstream arena-country is Walnut Creek's primary niche. Broadly defined, half of this season's 16 shows were country, with the genre also accounting for the biggest crowds. Rock, hip-hop and r&b all took a back seat. Here's the rundown:

Jimmy Buffett -- 19,491
Phish -- 14,413
Def Leppard -- 9,313
Tim McGraw -- 17,360
Lil' Wayne -- 12,159
Toby Keith -- 13,824
Rascal Flatts -- 18,531
311 -- 6,542
Mayhem Festival -- 6,932
Kenny Chesney -- 19,917
Journey -- 17,626
Jill Scott -- 5,797
Kid Rock -- 8,278
Jason Aldean -- 20,026
Brad Paisley -- 17,333
Chris Brown -- 11,119

About an hour into Wilco's Tuesday night show at Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater, Jeff Tweedy broke his vocal spell just long enough to banter a bit. Noting that Wilco's new album had been released that day, he deadpanned, "Won't you join us in singing along with songs you don't know?"

That preceded a song with the conclusion, "I was born to die alone" -- and funny thing, that just happens to be said album's first single. Leave it to Tweedy to make a song laced with existential dread the radio-emphasis track. But doing things the hard (or at least unconventional) way has always been Wilco's style. Meanwhile, there's also this: Even if you can't sing along with Tweedy's words, you can probably sing along with Nels Cline's guitar.

Barring that, you can see lots of photos from Tuesday's concert here.

It may not be free, but the city of Raleigh's new Bud Light Cityfest is pretty close. The five-show series at the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater will kick off next month and run into October, with each show costing $5 -- a price that includes any and all extra service charges. Based on the first two acts, it looks like the lineups will be along the lines of the old Raleigh Downtown Live free-show series. Dates and acts are still coming together, and so far they've announced two of the five headliners:

Aug. 27 -- Ed Kowalczyk (formerly of Live)
Oct. 1 -- Rusted Root

New to the local concert schedule, Wilco at the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater on Sept. 27 -- which just happens to be the very day the group's new album "The Whole Love" will be released. That's pretty cool, but something even cooler is the opening act: Mr. "Jesus of Cool" himself, the great Nick Lowe (who has a local connection, in that he records for Triangle-based Yep Roc). Ticket details are pending.
 

This week brings a couple of very fine show announcements. First up is Bon Iver, the group led by former Raleigh resident Justin Vernon, who will play the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater with Rosebuds on July 29 -- a bill you could call Friends of Megafaun. Vernon used to play with the three members of Megafaun in DeYarmond Edison (and he was in on their Sounds of the South project last fall); and Megafaun's Brad Cook is a sometime member of Rosebuds as bassist. Tickets go on sale Friday.

Over at Durham Performing Arts Center, meanwhile, Steve Earle has been announced for Sept. 17. Earle played solo and mostly did Townes Van Zandt songs on his last Triangle show. But this time, he'll bring in a band featuring his wife, Allison Moorer. Tickets go on sale June 3.

Between a sluggish overall economy and ticket prices that everyone agrees are too high (without actually doing anything about them, of course), the concert industry has taken a pretty serious battering in recent years. But the outdoor-concert season still rolls around this time every year. While it looks like this year will be more of a last-minute/wing-it kind of thing than in years past, some decent stuff is still headed our way. For particulars about that and schedules for the venues, see the story in Friday's paper.

By the time the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater opens its second season next spring, it should have a different name -- one involving a title sponsor, which will put some dollars into the budget. As to what the name might be, alas, that's still no closer to being settled than it was six months ago.

"I am starting over with looking for a name and title sponsor," says Roger Krupa, who oversees the venue as director of the Raleigh Convention Center. "We've had three near-misses, starting with Bud Light. Nobody has complained about the price [$1.5 million for five years], so that doesn't seem to be the issue. Things are just very tight out there right now."

Meantime, attendance figures are out for the 5,600-capacity venue's first season. And it went like this:

*Connells/grand opening (June 4) -- 4,500
Backstreet Boys (June 6) -- 3,246
Paramore (July 23) -- 5,228
Shinedown (July 25) -- 4,245
Gov't Mule (July 26) -- 1,551
Slightly Stoopid (July 28) -- 4,048
Chelsea Handler (July 30) -- 4,912
Barenaked Ladies (July 31) -- 3,099
Goo Goo Dolls (Aug. 9) -- 2,951
O.A.R. (Aug. 10) -- 2,863
Umphrey's McGee (Aug. 13) -- 1,681
Heart (Aug. 14) -- 2,910
Maroon 5 (Aug. 17) -- 3,879
Sound Tribe Sector 9 (Aug. 25) -- 1,301
Dukes of September (Aug. 28) -- 2,862
*NC Symphony (Sept. 12) -- 2,500
Black Crowes (Sept. 17) -- 3,176
Vampire Weekend (Oct. 17) -- 3,560
Stone Temple Pilots (Oct. 19) -- 2,267
311 (Oct. 30) -- 1,882

That comes to 62,661 total for 20 shows. And the schedule wasn't exactly cutting-edge, but it had its moments; especially Vampire Weekend's Oct. 17 show. If a naming-rights deal comes through for 2011 and DRA management has an extra $300,000 in the budget, that will probably help with both the booking and the place's creature comforts.

While I'm at it, here's how 2010 went for the big city-owned joint in Raleigh, 20,000-capacity Walnut Creek:

Widespread Panic (April 23-24) -- 10,218
Country Throwdown (May 28) -- 8,683
Brooks & Dunn (June 5) -- 19,946
Lynyrd Skynyrd (June 18) -- 9,361
Rascal Flatts (June 25) -- 17,604
Phish (July 1) -- 12,969
Toby Keith (July 10) -- 14,016
John Mayer (July 17) -- 11,456
Tim McGraw (July 24) -- 13,810
Santana (July 28) -- 6,732
Mayhem Festival (Aug. 3) -- 8,536
Zac Brown Band (Aug. 11) -- 12,686
Jack Johnson (Aug. 21) -- 14,599
Creed (Aug. 27) -- 10,198
Brad Paisley (Aug. 28) -- 19,092
Kiss (Aug. 29) -- 13,348
Kings of Leon (Sept. 13) -- 7,484
Tom Petty (Sept. 18) -- 18,759
Sugarland (Oct. 2) -- 12,968
Avett Brothers (Oct. 8) -- 7,409

At 21 shows and just under 250,000 attendees, 2010 wasn't Walnut Creek's slowest season ever. But it was close. In fact, the only season with less attendance was 2007, which had 22 shows draw about 235,000 people. This year was a sharp drop from 2008's figures of 26 shows and 348,000 attendees.

More than ever, country is Walnut Creek's primary style. The venue's eight country shows drew 118,505 people, including the year's two biggest shows (Brad Paisley and Brooks & Dunn). But the most notable aspect of 2010 was some of the things that weren't there.

This is the first season I can remember without a show that drew at least 20,000 people. And some of Walnut Creek's most reliable regulars went missing this year, including Kenny Chesney, Jimmy Buffett, Dave Matthews Band and the Allman Brothers. In fact, this was the first year Walnut Creek didn't have the Allman Brothers, but that's an excused absence: Gregg Allman was recovering from a liver transplant.