Lansden E. Hill Jr. grew in the 1950s in East Tennessee tobacco country. After the tobacco was cut and sold in November, and the men had a little pocket money, Hill’s neighbor would order Roman candles and firecrackers through the mail.

So Christmas and New Year’s was fireworks season in LaFollette.

“I’d watch my dad and a couple of men shoot ’em,” Hill says. “My cousin and I would collect all the firecrackers that hadn’t shot.

“We’d pull the fuses and, well, when you’re working with such short fuses, they tend to go off more in your hand than in the grass. I still have all my fingers, but some of them still sting.”

Hill developed a lifelong obsession with fireworks, one that has developed into the world-renowned Pyro Shows, based in what is still his hometown of LaFollette, about 30 minutes north of Knoxville.

Hill

Pyro Shows, will put on about 40 events in Middle Tennessee – and many more around the country – on the July Fourth. Forbes magazine has listed two Pyro shows, Nashville and Washington, D.C., in its compilation of the “Top 10 Best July 4th Fireworks Displays.”

Nashville matters to company

Hill will personally trek, again, to Nashville, where he will oversee the granddaddy of ’em all, a 27-minute show with more than eight tons of explosives, a $100,000-plus performance that consistently lands Nashville among the top five displays in the country.

And this year’s will be longer – and better, organizers say – than any in Nashville history.

“We’re doing some different things this year that will be very noticeable,” says Butch Spyridon, president/CEO of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau, which puts on the annual riverfront Fourth of July bash.

“We wanna make sure we’re not bored. We want to be entertained, too,” he says, laughing.

Metro officials estimate the Fourth of July event draws 100,000 to 150,000 people downtown, making it the largest one-day event in Nashville, bigger than any Titans game or any single day of the CMA Music Festival.

Money for fun

Trailerloads of fireworks stand at the ready along Nashville’s East Bank. Lansden Hill’s Musicy City Fourth of July show, as well as his D.C. Independence Day show, rank among the 10 best nationally.

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And it started with Hill, now 63, pulling fuses from dud firecrackers. Each December, as a boy, Hill set off more and more fireworks, and eventually started selling them.

At 18, Hill had his first-ever fireworks show, thanks to his uncle, the general manager for a factory that made shirts for JC Penney.

He set off 18 $1 shells at the 1969 company picnic – one shell every 20-30 seconds – and was paid $36.

“I made as much money in 10 minutes as I would’ve mowing six yards or working at the auto store for two Saturdays. I felt like I’d hit the mother load.”

Two years later, in 1971, Hill formed his own fireworks company, Lansden Hill Enterprises, which became Pyro Shows 11 years later.

In 1976, Hill scored 11 bicentennial shows.

Hill’s Pyro Shows puts on about 40 fireworks displays each Independence Day, but he spends each Fourth of July making sure Nashville’s shows impresses the 100,000 to 150,000 who watch each year.

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“For me at that time, that was a milestone,” he recalls. “I couldn’t believe so many communities would pay money to have a fireworks show. I probably would’ve paid them money to let me shoot fireworks.”

Big gigs

Throughout, Hill kept his “day job” of working in, and eventually running, the family insurance business, EE Hill & Son, Inc., the “EE” being his grandfather and the “son” being his dad.

Yes, fireworks show producers need lots of liability insurance. No, Hill doesn’t sell that insurance to himself for Pyro Shows. They found an insurance company that specializes in pyro.

Hill says he tried to get his fireworks shows in Nashville for years, to no avail.

“We’d never get the nod,” he notes. “A company from LaFollette, Tennessee does not garner a great deal of respect.”

Hill’s break came in 1985, when the guy who was supposed to set off fireworks for an annual Nashville Valentine’s Day celebration couldn’t prove he had insurance.

So, for $500, Hill provided the show in the parking lot next to the state Capitol building for the Heart of the City celebration.

That led to a 1987 birthday party for pop radio station Y-107 (now 107.5 The River), and Hill and Pyro Shows has been in Nashville ever since.

Gigs in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and even the Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., soon followed.

“A lot of our success has pivoted on the city of Nashville,” he says.

That’s why Hill stays personally involved in the Nashville’s “Music City July 4th: Let Freedom Sing!” celebration.

And that’s not lost on Spyridon and the CVB.

“The fact that he comes here every year means a lot to us,” Spyridon adds.

Trust, but also tragedy

The CVB also likes that he’s credible, he’s safe and he is creative and willing to work with local producers and the symphony to create a unique show each year.

“I’m not buying a cookie cutter show,” Spyridon says simply, adding that Hill is still approachable, despite his level of expertise and national reputation.

“He has to be one of the most knowledgeable guys in the country, if not the world, but he is absolutely real people, a good Tennessee boy,” Spyridon says.

“He fits in with us, public works, police, fire, other people we coordinate. The first responders trust him, and we trust him.”

That trust has been hard earned and filled with sadness.

Around lunchtime on June 5, in 1997, an explosion killed four of Hill’s employees at the Pryo Shows’ 4,000-square-foot warehouse in LaFollette. Employees were gearing up for Fourth of July shows.

Federal officials told the New York Times during the investigation that Pyro Shows had passed all inspections and had proper licensing prior to the tragedy.

OSHA closed the case in 1998 with no willful or repeat violations found.

What Nashville wants

There is one more goal, though, that the CVB has for Hill and Pyro Shows: They want to see fireworks in the shape of a music note.

And Hill has tried. But, Spyridon adds, “About two out of 20 showed up. Most of them were short and squatty, anything but a music note.

“But he tried for a couple of years. We’ve abandoned that for a time, but we’ll go back to it.”

Hill says he hasn’t given up, nor will he stop coming to Nashville.

“Nashville is who brought me to the party, that’s where I’m gonna stay.”

There are challenges, Hill says.

“Way too much stress, way too many hours – Why am I doing this?” he says.

“Then people cheer, and horns honk and people high-five you after the show, and then I’m like, ‘That’s why I do this! It’s fun.’”