He’s an award-winning country singer who doesn’t consider himself a country crooner.

Johnny Reid may have won top male vocalist from the Canadian Country Music Association in 2008 and 2009 but his real fans know he’s more of an R&B, soul kind of guy.

“It’s not a secret . . . I’ve never considered myself a country singer,” stated Reid, who performs at the Centrium as the headliner at Westerner Days on Saturday, July 24. “I’ve never called myself any kind of singer. I’ve just sung my songs and found an audience — a lot of people that want to hear what I have to say and enjoy the way I say it.”

Do they ever.

Fans can’t seem to get enough of the Scotland-born artist, who moved to Ontario with his family at age 17. After his first album, Born to Roll, went gold in 2005, Reid’s second album, Kicking Stones, was certified platinum in 2007, and his last album, Dance With Me, went double-platinum in Canada.

Reid also recently released a DVD, Johnny Reid: Live at the Jubilee, which is the triple-platinum top-selling music DVD in Canada.

On top of his phenomenal sales, the singer has been raking in acclaim, most recently winning a 2010 Juno Award for Country Album of the Year for Dance With Me.

And he recently signed a contract with EMI Music Worldwide, which is poised to launch him into the tough U.S. market. Reportedly, EMI is set to market Reid as a soulful rock singer south of the border — which is just as well, since his music would be more likely to get airplay on rock, pop or adult contemporary stations than U.S. country radio.

The 35-year-old singer remains humble for his Canadian success, thanking his “tartan army” of fans and sounding eternally grateful to this country for helping make his dreams happen.

“My mother and father left Scotland for better opportunities for my brother and I. . . . For me to be able to (do what I do), it just confirms that they made a good decision. That’s something I’ll never forget,” he has stated.

While Reid spends part of the year living in Nashville, he still spends his summers in Ontario with his family because he thinks his children (two of his three sons are American) should know where their mother hails from.

“I tell people Canada’s like a big bowl of confetti, there are all these little pieces of different sizes, shapes and colours, but you throw them up in the air and it looks beautiful,” he said, referring to this country’s multicultural policies.

But as far as his own ethnicity is concerned, the singer has admitted he still feels squarely Scottish.

He spent all his formative years in Scotland and it was there that he first started writing down words. “My pockets used to be full of these little bits of paper and my Mom used to get after me because she’d put them through the laundry,” he recalled.

“But I kept on writing these wee poems and I guess they were my first songs.”

lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com