TORONTO - On the eve of the Juno Awards, Bobby Bazini admits that his nerves are beginning to gnaw away at him.

The 21-year-old upstart crooner from Mont-Laurier, Que., is nominated for two awards: best new artist and pop album of the year, which will pit the shaggy singer against the likes of Sarah McLachlan and 17-year-old teen-pop titan Justin Bieber.

Though he's a freshly minted star in his native Quebec, Bazini is still unknown to many in Canada. When he settles into the audience at Toronto's Air Canada Centre on Sunday, it'll mark the first time he's ever even watched the Junos -- and that's not helping his nerves any.

"It's gonna be my first time ... it's going to be a nervous, very stressful night," said the soft-spoken Bazini over the line from Montreal.

"It's just amazing for me to have the opportunity to be alongside these big names. I'm just starting. So it's cool. It's amazing."

"It's a dream come true."

And if it all seems a little bit surreal to Bazini, well, it's only the latest piece of good fortune in a charmed year.

Bazini released his debut album, "Better in Time," last March, and could hardly have anticipated its wildfire spread, beginning in Quebec (where the album was quickly certified platinum) and burning through countries around the world.

What is it about Bazini, exactly? Well, the monochromatic cover is a telling sign -- despite Bazini's boyish charm, his music is steeped in the classics, drawing liberally from country, soul, folk, rock, R&B and pop.

His anachronistic tastes were fostered at a young age. Raised in the picturesque Upper Laurentians (an area Bazini describes as "a lot of mountains and woods and trees and beautiful lakes"), he learned guitar from his father, who had picked up the hobby from Bazini's granddad.

Though Bazini spoke only French until he was 13, his musical education was conducted largely in English -- and with a noticeable southern twang.

"It's always been country music -- Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks -- (and) it was always American country music," he says.

"So that's why my musical culture is all English."

Bazini's parents divorced when he was 15, and work led them to Montreal. But he decided to stay in the less urban area where he grew up, living with his grandmother. That's when he really began taking songwriting seriously.

"I wanted to be as good as Bob Dylan, which I'm still far away from," he says, chuckling softly. "But he was one of my first inspirations as a writer. He's an amazing writer, and he's very intelligent, and his lyrics are well-written. That's where I started.

"But Bob Dylan used to write about all sorts of things, and he was trying to change stuff with his lyrics. For me, for now, that's not what I'm trying to do. I write about my life and my family."

And girls -- or, more specifically, one girl. He admits that almost every track on his debut was written about his girlfriend (except for the swinging, stinging "One Thing or Two," a poison-penned dart aimed at an ex), who will accompany him to the Junos this weekend.

But while Bazini's lovelorn lyrics might betray his youth, his grit-inflected voice and melange of classic influences do not.

With his gangly frame, incandescent grin and perpetually mussed black hair, he certainly has the look necessary for a pop star with chart aspirations, but he's also a young artist who styles his singing after Otis Redding and insists on live instrumentation -- in other words, he's a throwback, especially when compared to the computer-aided slickness of Juno competitors Bieber or Down With Webster.

"Talk to him about Britney Spears and it's like, he's clueless," said Tino Izzo, Bazini's Montreal producer best-known for working with Celine Dion.

"He has no idea that that whole realm even exists."

Added Bazini: "As much as I want to have my own sound, you're always influenced by others -- for me, it's always been music from the '60s and '70s."

"(I want something) more raw, more authentic. It's all real instruments here. I hate when you're listening to something and you don't know what a sound is (because) it doesn't exist. A guy had to come with his computer (to) sing the song.

"I can play my songs acoustic because that's how I wrote them."

Izzo heard Bazini's demos before they had the chance to meet. When he was finally introduced to Bazini, he was floored.

"It was, oh my God -- I was instantly smitten by the voice, but I had such a different mental image for who could be behind the voice," Izzo said.

"He sounds like he's at least 30-40 years older than he actually is. I mean, you're picturing this bearded man and then I walked into (the) office to actually meet him, and ... it was just this little tiny kid in a T-shirt. And it was like, whoa, what happened there?"

But while Izzo was surprised by Bazini's age and appearance, he remained impressed.

"(His music) is just refreshingly simple and honest," Izzo said. "I've been doing this for 25 years now, and voices and talents like that don't come around that often, where it comes from somewhere else.

"We live in an age where music is so contrived and it's so refreshing to have somebody come along, where it's like, here's this kid who comes from a little hick town in Mont-Laurier and basically grew up listening to a lot of good music and it just formed his musical personality."

"It's a little bit of a strange package, because there's this good-looking, young, charismatic kid and then there's all the culture that goes with it, and the artistry."

Bazini has begun working on his second album, and he's recording again with Izzo. Bazini says he can see his growth as a songwriter in the new tunes he's developing.

"It's not that they're better songs, it's not that -- it's just like lyrically, for sure, I have more experience now. I have more vocal ability. You don't want to repeat yourself so you try other stuff. You go a bit deeper."

"It's a road album. It's about the road, and all the good and bad things about it, and all the experience we lived, to be away from home, to be away from my family and my girlfriend and living with a band.

"And also, the sound is a bit different, for sure. I'm closer to my roots, I think, which is country music. But there's still soul influences. And it sounds more '70s, the sound of the drums and all that, we're going deeper with that."

Yet even as Bazini mines from the past, he has an eye toward the future.

The country-music aficionado hopes his travels take him to Nashville, saying that releasing his album there would be a "dream come true."

"Better than Time" has already been distributed in 28 countries, with Bazini drawing positive press from across the Atlantic.

But he's also focused on expanding his audience through English Canada -- and the Junos, surely, can help with that.

"I'm glad I've had the opportunity to be in the French countries and all that, but I was totally looking forward to going to English markets. I'm really happy to introduce my record to the rest of Canada. I'm looking forward to doing more shows and all that.

"We're slowly preparing."

Actually, "slow" might not be the right adjective for what has, thus far, been a dizzying rise for the youngster.

But Bazini insists that his life is pretty much the same as it was before his record took off.

"The only thing that's changed, it got me more busy, I think," he says. "That's pretty much about it."