LEWISTON —  Singer, songwriter and former Lewiston shoe-worker Ray LaMontagne earned three Grammy nominations Thursday, including Song of the Year for his ’70s throwback “Beg Steal or Borrow.”

The nomination, his first in one of the Grammy’s top categories, puts LaMontagne in contention for the award alongside rappers Eminem and Cee Lo Green and popular country music trio Lady Antebellum.

After the Grammy’s morning announcement, Los Angeles Times’ pop music critic Ann Powers called the nomination a “deserving shocker.”

His most recent album, August’s “God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise,” has sold well. It debuted at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top 200 and No. 1 on the digital album chart, selling 64,000 digital copies in its first week, according to his label, RCA Records.

The album was also nominated Thursday for Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-classical.

LaMontagne’s career has been rising steadily in the past decade, since the days he played shows at the Oddfellow Theater in Buckfield. He was known then for his shy on-stage persona, but even those small audiences responded to his original songs and his quiet soulfulness.

“I’m not very comfortable with myself,” he told the Sun Journal in 2005. “I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin.”

Born in New Hampshire, LaMontagne moved a lot with his mother and five siblings. After graduating from high school, he worked as a carpenter. Then he took a job in a Lewiston shoe factory.

“This was a particularly dark and weird time for me,” he said in his RCA biography. “I never saw the light of day for months. One morning, after I’d worked there for about a year, I had my clock set for 4 a.m., like always, and I woke up to this amazing sound coming from the clock radio. It was Stephen Stills, doing a song called ‘Treetop Flyer.’ I just sat up in bed and listened. Something about that song just hit me.

“I did not go to work that day; I went to record stores and sought that album out. It was called ‘Stills Alone.’ I listened to it, and I was transformed. It killed me … it was huge. You don’t know how those things happen. I just knew: ‘This is what I’m gonna do.’ That morning really changed everything — my whole life.”

He quit the shoe shop to write and perform music. He lived in his van for about a year.

Then, the tall, lanky singer won over people with his music.

He bought a house in Wilton with advance money from his recording contract. His first album, “Trouble,” sold well, largely on the strength of the hit title track.

He has since toured nationally and internationally.

And he has released more albums. His third, “Gossip in the Grain” was nominated for Grammys last year for engineering and production.

And he has bought another house, this time a rural western Massachusetts farm that once belonged to Norman Mailer. It was there, in a homemade studio, that he recorded the newest album in two weeks with his band, the Pariah Dogs.

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