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holiday concert at Southold High School on Dec. 21. (Credit: Katharine Schroeder)

Brady Rymer, Southold’s own Grammy nominee, has been nominated for the prestigious award for a third time.

Rymer and his band, the Little Band That Could, were nominated last Tuesday for Best Children’s Album for this year’s record, “Press Play.”

“You’re blown away,” Rymer said. “It’s excitement and it’s a nice, big honor.”

The nomination caps an exciting year for Rymer, who jammed with Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler during an impromptu meeting while promoting the release of “Press Play” in July.

Rymer’s eighth album was influenced in part by his love of his hometown, he said. The song “It’s a Beauty” was inspired by the story of a group of North Forkers who worked to restore an old fire truck from the 1930s and scenes for the music video “Me on the Map” were filmed in Southold.

Though the band’s other members — Claudia Mussen, Liz Queler, Seth Farber, Dan Myers, Larry Eagle and Jeremy Chatzky — don’t live on the North Fork, they still have ties to the area, Rymer said.

“It’s been 10 years and they’ve been playing out here since the beginning,” he said. “One of our first gigs was at the Vail-Leavitt … They’ve been out here enough to call the North Fork home.” The band still performs locally.

“Press Play” was originally meant to be an album of lullabies, Rymer said. But when the band got together to work on the record, they decided they weren’t ready to slow down just yet.

“The band’s not very sleepy,” Rymer said, laughing. “We’re up and raring to go.”

Instead, the group met in New York City and began experimenting with different ideas. Rymer said the band learned “the courage to have fun, open up your hearts and let it fly.” He said he was especially proud of the different types of music he was able to include on the children’s record, like a pedal steel guitar and a full horn section.

“Everybody is represented on this album,” he said. “It makes this recognition even sweeter.”

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