Country Band, Family Fireworks Company Returning to Close out Dayton Fair

by Jonathan Weaver

The Dayton Fair will close out the annual festivities August 20 with bursts of energy both on the grandstand and in the sky.

Starting at 8PM, country fiddler Chris Higbee will bring the five-person band back to Dayton.

“It was almost immediate(ly) that (the Dayton Fair Board) asked me to come back,” Higbee said in an exclusive interview with the Kittanning Paper last week. “The people were awesome, man. I can’t wait to get back and see everybody.”

Last year, Higbee opened for country duo Dan + Shay.

Since last August, Higbee and his band have a new album “Ready or Not…” and single “Turning Up a Sundown.”

Country music fans might also see Higbee’s six-year-old son, Alex, fiddling and three-year-old daughter, Lucy Belle, dancing on-stage next weekend.

“Killer light show, exciting music…It’s gonna be a good show,” Higbee said. “I was born to entertain people. I love all aspects of it.”

Higbee performed three times last week – including at the grange fair in his hometown of Dawson (Fayette County).

Under the dazzling colors in the sky that follow Chris Higbee, music fans or fair-goers might be able to find Vincent J. Terrizzi – founder of the fireworks company Starfire Corporation.

His son –Vince Terrizzi, Jr. (a second-generation production manager) – said his father and mother, Audrey, incorporated the family-owned company in 1982 in Carrolltown (Cambria County) after both worked with a Buffalo-based fireworks company for several years.

“They are 70 years old and still come to work every day,” Vince said. “My dad goes out on shows – he got home at 4AM (last week) after a show in Pittsburgh.”

Audrey and 51-year-oldd daughter, Linda, now own the business.
“Ever since we were born, we’ve been around fireworks. It doesn’t matter if you’re Italian or not – it just depends how you are raised,” Vince said. “When you’re very family-oriented, you just stay with the family because that’s what we do. We’re a very tight family.

“It’s an art, and we enjoy it. We’ll keep it going with the family as long as we can. I’ve worked other jobs through the Fall and Spring, but at the end of the day, you always come back to your family.”

Vince, Jr., 44, said he and his sister would roll paper tubes as children and pound clay in tubes.

He said he will personally come to Dayton August 20 – and for more than just the loaded French fries.

“I have a lot of friends in the Dayton area, and the committee treats us so well. The Dayton Fair is one of my favorite places to go – the food, the fair board is fantastic,” Vince Jr. said. “I’ve been going to the Dayton Fair for a long time, and it was a few years ago that we got the call that they would like us to do their fireworks, and it was an exciting time for us.

“We enjoy performing for everyone, all the nice compliments people give us, and we look forward to doing (the show) again this year.”

He said the company “has a few tricks up (their) sleeve” this year.

“Some of the products that will be out on the Dayton Fair show will actually be made by us, right here in our factory,” Vince, Jr. said. “We’re hoping in the next couple years to create many jobs in fireworks manufacturing – we’ve been putting a lot of our resources into it.

“It’s a little bit harder than we anticipated, but we’re not giving up. There aren’t that many people doing it anymore.”

Currently, the business - which has additional offices in Missouri and New Jersey -employs about 185 people for shows.

Vince, Jr. hopes to employ about 85 new full-time employees at the manufacturing facilities in Missouri and Carrolltown.

“We have all the stuff in play, we have hundreds of acres of ground,” Vince Jr. said. “We’re not only looking to bring fireworks back to a larger scale in America but create skilled jobs to give people a good living – something more than just minimum-wage.”

Last month, Starfire also set off fireworks at East Brady Riverfest.

Starfire has 17 fireworks shows this weekend, including the Indiana County bicentennial.