Canadian country star Johnny Reid played the first of two shows at Massey Hall on Friday night. (Craig Robertson, QMI Agency)

TORONTO - Johnny Reid is one of the biggest music stars in Canada right now who you might never have heard of.

At least not in the mainstream sense.

Reid's latest album, A Place Called Love, debuted at No. 1 in Canada in early September, a week before the raspy-voiced singer picked up a leading four Canadian Country Music Awards for work from his 2009 breakthrough collection, Dance With Me.

And A Place Called Love remains in the Top Ten this week having sold over 90,000 copies since its release two and a half months ago.

Impressive to say the least.

So I considered it my music journalistic duty to check out the 36-year-old Scottish-born, Canadian-raised and Nashville-based singer-songwriter during the first of two back-to-back shows at Massey Hall on Friday night.

At this rate, the next time Reid comes to town he'll likely be playing a much larger venue.

The good and bad news is that Reid, whose wife and four children were in attendance, wears his heart on his sleeve.

He's a dynamic, enthusiastic and confident showman and storyteller with a strong sentimental side who loves his adoring audience and the spotlight as he held his arms out repeatedly after every song with a huge smile on his cute, clean-cut face.

There's even a heart in lights in the centre of his red curtained backdrop on a stage that was adorned with two ramps, and two staircases, and held an 11-piece band (13 if you include The Campbell Brothers on bagpipes who made an appearance towards the end of Reid's two-hour show).

And when he broke down repeatedly describing the death of his beloved grandmother, it was hard not to feel for him.

The bad news is subtlety isn't Reid's strong suit as he sometimes milked jokes just a little too long or seemed just little too stagey like when he shook an older man's hand at the conclusion of his new song, Hands Of The Working Man.

And the songs themselves, while having a strong broad, commercial appeal, weren't that distinguishable from one another.

But his voice - they don't call him "the country Rod Stewart" for nothing - and sheer charisma might melt the heart of even the most cynical of journalists.

Reid, who moved from Scotland to Brampton, Ont., when he was 15, and is now based in Nashville, also has an appealing soul and gospel side which he showed off to great effect on such set highlights as Let's Go Higher and Today I'm Gonna Try And Change The World.

And when he re-enacted the story of his drunk uncle verbally jousting with his disapproving aunt - as he introduced That Man Is Me - he was hard not to like.