The Marion Popcorn Festival has announced Marion native Chelsea Field will take the main stage on Friday, September 5, at 7:00 p.m. She will open for country sensation Phil Vassar who is set to perform at 8:30 p.m. Both performances are free.

A part of the Marion Popcorn Festival “family”, Field has stepped onto the Festival’s main stage before as she was crowned Miss Teeny Pop 1997.

Singing since she was four years old, Field has actively been pursuing a career in country music for the past two years. “I love country music because it always tells a story,” said Field, “good or bad.”

Now immersed in Nashville’s very creative music community, Field has been writing a lot collaborating with “some wonderful writers.” She has also recently been recording some of those songs for a new project. The songs, like Field, combine solid Midwestern values with high energy as she writes about real life successes and heartbreak.

Those who remember hearing Field perform know she presents songs with compelling candor and a seemingly unlimited vocal range. She also loves connecting with her audiences.

“To hear that something I wrote or a performance I gave touched someone means everything to me,” she said. “That’s what my music is really all about, giving expression to love and loss, hopes and dreams, joy and sadness.

Those are experiences and emotions we all have and if my music can help someone through a rough spot or give their joy wings, then I can’t ask for any more than that.”

Field has lots of experience in performing before large audiences. Locals will remember that – at age eight -- she performed the National Anthem for a Cleveland Indians game. Later that year she sang for the Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins, and others.

Since then she has performed up and down the Eastern half of the United States and become a regular opening act for such well-known artists as Big & Rich, Jason Aldean, Keith Anderson, Billy Currington, Dierks Bentley, Tracy Byrd, and Miranda Lambert, to name a few.