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

Britney's coming to the RBC. This time, my daughter's not been bugging me to get tickets.

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.

It's been more than two years since the Avett Brothers headlined a show of their own in the Triangle, in which time they've started hitting the upper reaches of the charts. They're still on the rise, and a new live album just came out this past Tuesday. They'll be onstage tonight at Raleigh's big shed, which is nearly triple the size of the last venue they sold out here. I'm curious about what kind of crowd they'll draw, among other things.

Meantime, check the interview in Friday's paper for some talk from Scott Avett about what's happening with the group these days.

Check out this here photo gallery of shots from the very popular country duo Sugarland's Saturday night show in Raleigh, shot by N&O photographer Scott Sharpe.

For the last 19 years, it's been constant as kudzu in the summertime: The one band you could always count on coming to Raleigh's Walnut Creek was the Allman Brothers, the only act to play there every season since the amphitheater opened in 1991. But barring a miracle of some sort, the streak will end this year. Gregg Allman is still recovering from last month's liver transplant, and the band is off the road until November at the earliest -- too late for Walnut Creek, which wraps in October.

"It appears we will not be playing Walnut Creek this year," says Allman Brothers manager Bert Holman. "That disappoints us, but Gregg's long-term health is more important to us. We have a lot of history at Walnut Creek and we hope to be able to come back for years to come. But he has to recover for that to happen."

I was beginning to fear that Concord's Avett Brothers would never headline a show over here again, and I was starting to get cranky about that. But they've finally come through with a local date, Oct. 8 at The Big Shed. It will be their first closing slot in the Triangle since July 2008 in Cary. Ticket details are still to come, but for now: Yay!

Greetings, all. I'm still in catch-up mode after a stretch off the grid. And in my absence, a couple of choice shows popped up on the calendar. One is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who will play Raleigh's Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion on May 6 -- the very first date on their U.S. tour, as it happens. The very next night, May 7, brings the great singer/songwriter John Prine to Cary's Booth Amphitheatre with Old Crow Medicine Show in tow as opening act. Pre-sale action on both shows is already going on.

Raleigh's Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek won't wrap up its 2009 season until next month, but the first show of 2010 is already on the schedule. Arena-country superstar Tim McGraw has released dates for next year's "Southern Voice" tour, and it comes to Walnut Creek on July 24. That makes two big country shows in Raleigh for next year.

Coldplay plays at the Time Warner Pavilion at Walnut Creek on Thursday night, Aug. 6, 2009.