Meet The 2024 Artists: Mike & Devon Walter (National Anthem Display)

2024 National Anthem Presenter

Mike and Devon Walter

Waterloo, Illinois
Members of MOpyro

This father-son team loves fireworks and loves their country! Mike and Devon are more than honored to present the Sky Wars National Anthem this year on behalf of MOpyro. They promise to kick off our championship with a whole lotta red, white, and BOOM.

Mike and Devon’s Pyro Story

Mike says the first money he ever earned he spent on fireworks! As a kid, he’d head straight for the fireworks tent to “spend every last penny” he earned from odd jobs. He was definitely the pyro of his family, and each 4th of July was his time to shine. In ‘95 Mike joined the military and became a combat engineer, a perfect career fit for a guy intrigued by explosives! 

After he and his wife Nicole started a family, they made sure to carry on the tradition of doing an Independence Day celebration with fireworks at their house in Waterloo. Some of Devon’s earliest and favorite fireworks memories were filling up a cart of fireworks with his dad at the Fireworks Superstore in Hannibal, MO each year. 

This father-son duo’s practice evolved as their mutual interest in pyro grew: their once 100% hand-lit neighborhood 4th of July show became more sophisticated with carefully fused cake boards. They eventually upgraded to the Cobra electronic firing system in 2016, just a couple months before they attended their first ever Sky Wars event.

“We were just blown away,” Mike said. “Like, we couldn’t even believe what you could do with fireworks.” Sky Wars (known by a previous name) was held at Brookdale Farms that year, and was the introduction to ‘pyromusicals’ that inspired them to incorporate musical scripting into their own shows. 

Sky Wars also introduced them to the Missouri Pyrotechnic Association (MOpyro) club, which they joined in 2017. In 2018, they took the PGI course at Sky Wars to get the credentials to purchase Pro Use products. 

Mike has his Missouri shooters license and is currently working on his Illinois shooters license! Devon is currently an undergrad at Mizzou studying business, and continues to be an avid pyro alongside Mike whenever he has the chance.

Teaser of the 2024 National Anthem at Sky Wars

“Red, white, blue, and big!” Mike said, noting that there will be a giant mix of 1.3 and 1.4 effects courtesy of Raccoon Fireworks. 

The two even lucked out and found a new National Anthem track recorded just this year that they haven’t yet seen used in any other display. In contrast to last year’s National Anthem by Jim Walter (no relation), Devon and Mike went with a more traditional Anthem in terms of keeping the fireworks contained within the music.

“We have two minutes and forty seconds to shoot 44 cases of 1.3 and 34 cases of 1.4, so that’s a challenge in itself so it doesn’t look just like sky puke from start to finish,” Mike said. 

Another teaser: no fireballs. They agreed in the end it didn’t need it – though not for Devon’s lack of trying!

Favorite pyro show to date: 

For Mike, their 2024 Independence Day backyard show – their 15th annual – is his favorite to date. Of course they try to outdo themselves every year, and this year they made it their biggest show yet. The theme was 80s and 90s alternative rock, and it had 1,729 cues over 20 glorious minutes.

But as someone who’s always trying to top their own work, Mike thinks this two-minute-forty-second Sky Wars National Anthem will be his new favorite show. It’s not every day you send fifteen hundred cues up in under three minutes!

Their choreography style:

“Intentional, and sometimes intentionally chaotic,” is how Devon describes it.

As with any great team, Mike and Devon lean on each other’s strong suits: Mike will put together a framework of the big picture he has in his head, and Devon’s expertise is in fine tuning the details as well as putting soundtracks together (Mike estimates their music selection is 75% Devon’s input, 25% his own).

The duo’s ‘big-stage’ display experience:

Devon and Mike continue to grow their pyro knowledge and regularly assist in MOpyro’s endeavors. They participate in the Missouri Club Choreography Showdown hosted by Spirit of ‘76 Fireworks every April, where MOpyro goes head-to-head in a pyromusical battle with Kansas City Area Pyrotechnicians (KCAP) – Mike led MOpyro’s show in 2022, and Devon led it in 2024. 

They lend a hand at other MOpyro club shoots, too: Bowling Green, Moscow Mills, and of course Sky Wars. This is their fourth year assisting with the Sky Wars National Anthem, and it’s their first time leading the show.

2024 has been a wild pyro year for Mike and Devon outside of their MOpyro involvement, too! It’s the first year they’ve led two shows for a display company, J&M Displays: they shot a municipal 4th of July show at Lake St. Louis, and a one-year anniversary show for a casino in Carbondale, IL.

How’s it feel to be representing MoPyro, the club that started this whole event 19 years ago, on the Sky Wars stage in this year’s national anthem?

“It’s an honor, for sure.” Mike noted that many of the folks on their ‘Solid Second’ shoot team are veterans, something that’s bonded them a bit.

For Devon’s part, “it feels great” to be able to present the National Anthem for this amazing country and have so many proud Americans see it. “Doing all this is really exciting for me. I’m 21. It’s pretty cool being able to get all this experience at such a young age. I’m loving doing this.”

Finally, Mike wanted to give a shout-out to MOpyro for giving them the spaces and opportunities to enhance their skills, and to MOpyro’s safety director Jim Rozycki as well as Ron Green for their continued efforts. 

“Bringing safety to the industry is paramount for the industry to survive regulation,” Mike said. “I think pyro clubs are going to play an important part in that… Our backyard show is safer than it ever could have been, and we wouldn’t be at this point without joining a pyro club.”