Christopher Everett Sexton '97 and his bluegrass band Nothin’ Fancy were named SPBGMA's 2009 Entertaining Group of the Year during the annual awards ceremony held on February 15, at the Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville, Tenn. This marks the second year the band has won the association's top honor, having taken the award in 2008 as well. Sexton plays fiddle for the band. Nothin’ Fancy was nominated for nine other awards, including Fiddler Player of the Year. This is Sexton’s fourth nomination for that award. He has not only been noted for his unique improvisational style, which melds his classical training with bluegrass and jazz, but he is also noteworthy as an entertainer along with his fellow Nothin’ Fancy band mates. When Sexton isn't playing bluegrass, he’s teaching private lessons at home in Manassas, Va., and at studios in...  Read Post   Comment

DOWN A QUIET ROAD in Glen Allen, Virginia, a two-and-one-half story brick structure known as Walkerton sits in reposeful simplicity. The largest 19th-century tavern still standing in Henrico County, Walkerton was once a convenient stop-in for travelers along Old Washington Highway, then a major thoroughfare between Richmond and the Western Piedmont. As fate would have it, the old tavern's history is colored with Hampden-Sydney connections. The late S. Douglas Fleet, eponym of Hampden-Sydney's Fleet Gymnasium, spent much of his childhood there, as did Pratt Cook '82. Later, when Fleet was a sitting member of Hampden-Sydney's Board of Trustees, he purchased the house and entrusted Tom Davis '81, president of Virginia Restoration, with the task of restoring the historic tavern. With Fleet's vision and patronage and Davis' skilled craftsmanship,
Walkerton's splendor was born anew. Now a tangible piece of history, the tavern is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and, as Richmond Magazine announced, is the "Best Restored Old House" in the county.

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