A grand party

Once a year southwest Floridians pull out all the stops to celebrate the prolific inventor whose work helped give us the tattoo gun, wax paper, an electric torpedo, and the cement mixer.

Of course, Fort Myers's adopted son Thomas Edison is better known for his major, world-changing inventions or improvements on earlier patents: the lightbulb; the phonograph; and the kinetoscope, precursor of modern film.

This year's Light up the Town celebration — formerly the City of Palms Block Party —focuses more than ever on Edison's spirit of invention and improvement, with a new name, new location, and a new focus on entertainment to create what Edison Festival of Light executive director Brandee Bryant calls "the premier musical and entertainment celebration in downtown Fort Myers."

Changing focus

Besides the night the event is held — now on a Saturday rather Friday — the first change you'll notice is the party's name.

J. Tom Smoot III, the president of the festival's board of directors, was one of the people pushing for a new name.

"I thought the name 'block party' got watered down," he says. "It just didn't conjure up in my head something as grand as we wanted to put on."

Originally conceived as a fund-raiser for the Grand Parade of the Edison Festival, which costs around $60,000 to stage, the block party has grown into a destination event of its own, each year bringing in more people from an ever-wider radius in Southwest Florida.

Smoot was also one of a growing group who wanted to bring the focus of the event back to its conceptual roots.

"I really wanted to try to put Edison flavor in all of the events," he says. "A real celebration of Edison."

A 7½-minute short film, "Kinetoscope: The Life and Inventions of Thomas Edison," by Gerard Damiano, is an integral part of this year's block party.

The movie is the first by Damiano, a visual freelance artist whose focus is illustration and fine art. The son of a filmmaker (of more adult fare) with the same name, Damiano says he got into film as an "inevitable destination" for him as an artist. "Film is the ultimate evolution of visual arts," he says.

His Edison film started simply as a series of images he put together to project from a float in the Edison Festival's Grand Parade in 2004. When he later set the images to music, he says, he realized it had the makings of a film.

"I'd like to show Edison in a new way, the way he looked at the world in a new way," the filmmaker says. "What I hoped to capture is that creative sense and the inspiration I get from Edison."

Damiano, who splits his time between the family home in Queens and Fort Myers, is a graduate of Fort Myers High School, where he and Smoot played soccer together.

The two men had fallen out of touch until a mutual friend mentioned Damiano's film to the board president.

"It was amazing that someone had gone out and done something that fulfilled our imaginations about this," Smoot says of his reaction upon first seeing the short.

The board decided to use the film as a centerpiece of sorts for the newly Edison-centric block party, and it will be screened during the event on what executive director Bryant mysteriously describes only as "a very large, unconventional surface."

Images from the film — which features digitized images from "every Edison clip I could get my hands on," says Damiano — will also be projected in various locations throughout the venue.

Rocking the block

The block party has always meant plenty of live music, and this year, after using focus groups to determine what festivalgoers wanted to see, the board decided on two national acts to headline the event: rock band Sister Hazel and country singer Mark Wills.

Sister Hazel has had a handful of hits in their twelve-year history — "Happy," "All for You," "Champagne High"— and still gets plenty of airplay. Their style fuses elements of rock, alternative, pop, and even folk music into a smooth, unique sound, headed by lead singer Ken Block's distinctive voice.

"They have a huge crossover appeal," says booking agent Paul Easton of Talent! in Naples. "They seemed like a natural for this festival."

And Wills is a country music favorite for his soulful ballads like "I Do (Cherish You)" and "Don't Laugh at Me," and the kitschy, reminiscent recent hit "19-Something."

As it has always been, Light up the Town will continue to be a showcase for local bands as well. This year's lineup includes Fort Myers's Heather Brooks Band, made up of five local musicians who do both covers and their own originals, with what Easton describes as "kind of a cool Steely Dan, Ricky Lee Jones element to it—but with a little edge."

Reggae band Tropical Breeze returns to the block party after a few years' absence, bringing their popular tropical flavor to the mainstage in Centennial Park by the boat ramp, in covers of what Easton calls "all the great reggae stuff": Bob Marley, Steel Pulse, UB40, Maxi Priest and Third World.

Up-and-coming classic-rock cover band Liquor Box plays the second stage, located in the parking lot of the Harborside Convention Center, along with Mario Infanti and Catman Doodz, a southwest Florida institution with a large local following who play a mix of jazz, rock, and blues "as only Mario can," Easton says.

Easton is also bringing in Nashville-based country act Lucy Angel, a band fronted by a female vocal duo whose first CD is being launched this year with a tour of Japan.

A platform for the community

One brand-new creation for this year's revamped block party was the addition of a third stage to feature "the best of the best in the community," as Bryant puts it. The community stage, located on Monroe Street in front of the post office, between Bay and Edwards, will host its acts from 4 to 8 p.m.

The new undertaking became the baby of longtime Edison Festival volunteer and past board president Diane Maddox, who participated in the "Baby Parade" in the 1940s, as it was known then, and has been involved in some aspect of the annual events ever since.

Though the board has discussed the possibility of a community stage for years, it wasn't until just before this past Christmas that Maddox got the go-ahead to put it together, and she quickly launched into high gear to organize the organizations presenting performances the night of the block party.

The offerings include the Fort Myers High School Sound Wave, a group of students who play top-notch swing music from the '30s, '40s and '50s; Cape Coral's Robin Dawn Dance Academy, whose students will present a show featuring tap, ballet, and modern dance; and the Bayshore Elementary School cloggers, who also participate in the Grand Parade on Feb. 18.

Also staging a performance are students from Fort Myers Colours School of the Arts, whose ten-foot-tall puppets had captured Maddox's imagination years ago in the Grand Parade, and whose founding director, Sharon Ferguson, was the first person Maddox approached for the community stage performances.

Colours students will present a high-energy amalgam of song and a variety of dance forms including hip-hop and traditional West African dance.

The more things change ...

Other changes include the vendors who'll be peddling refreshments and food to partygoers. This event's offerings have a wider scope than the usual hamburgers-and-hot-dogs fare (though they'll be represented, naturally).

Other offerings will range from fried green tomatoes to whole fried onions to crepes, fajitas, and barbecue. There will be German and Caribbean food; Greek and Italian.

Liquid libations include fresh-squeezed lemonade, a variety of wines, and both domestic and specialty beers — the latter served by volunteers from this year's title sponsor, Chico's.

"We know how to have a good time when we volunteer," jokes Chico's community relations manager, Cole Peacock.

This year marks the first time a single sponsor has backed the entire chain of events under the Edison Festival of Light aegis, and Chico's was eager to get behind the community event.

The children's area has also been expanded, with more rides, games, and food.

And partygoers can register — free — to win Southwest Airlines' hourly giveaway of two tickets anywhere the airline flies, to be given away every hour on the hour throughout the event at Southwest's booth.

Smoot and the festival board hope that the many changes, increased participation and expanded entertainment offerings are simply the beginning of what will be an ever-expanding Light up the Town celebration.

"We hope to give people something new that we can only build on in the future," Smoot says. "We'd like to see this thing grow and grow."

"We have so much material to work with," he says. "We're just getting started."