Photo: Vaughn Oliver

Vaughn Oliver, right, and members of Canadian group Chromeo. Oliver is nominated for a Grammy Award for his work on their latest album.

Vaughn Oliver's mother has always known her son was talented, but even she never expected he would make it all the way to a Grammy nomination. 

"I did not see this coming!" Andrea Martin, a longtime Penticton resident, said with a chuckle.

Thirty-eight-year-old Oliver is a a music producer and DJ born and raised in Penticton who has just been nominated in the "Best engineered album, non-classical" category for the upcoming 2019 Grammy Awards in February for his work on Canadian electro-funk group Chromeo's Head Over Heels album. 

His journey in the music business started when he was a student at Penticton Secondary School, purchasing his first turntable around the age of 15 while working at McDonald's. 

"At the time, it was a tough thing to get into, there wasn't much information out there or resources," Oliver said, who began figuring out how to DJ mostly by himself. 

Martin said she could tell right away it was something her son had a passion for, and after he graduated high school and moved to Vancouver, she encouraged him to keep pursuing it. 

"He was looking at going to Emily Carr but I said, 'Why? You're absolutely passionate about music, why not consider making that your career?'" Martin said.

Vaughn ended up agreeing with her, and attended a recording arts program, which opened up the doors that led him to his current career in Los Angeles. Martin said her son is incredibly hard-working, but she looks forward to his visits home and to the visits she gets to make to California for a glimpse into his life in the business. 

"This one time I was down there visiting, and Vaughn said casually, 'Oh, do you want to take this home for me?' And he pulls out this massive, framed platinum album," Martin said, referring to work Oliver did with Chromeo on their track "Jealous." 

The Grammy nomination, for more work he did with Chromeo, is a huge honour for Oliver.

"It's pretty amazing, it feels incredible to be recognized," Oliver said. "I guess I put my 10,000 hours in."

He looks back on his time as a teenager exploring his love of music, and says it's the passion born then that brought him all the way to his current success. 

"It was never really a question, it's never easy and there's never any job security in it," Oliver said. "Whether there's job security or not, you just have to keep going." 

As for the actual night of the Grammy's in February, Vaughn doesn't have plans yet — he joked that he isn't even sure of an invite. If he does win and gets his own iconic gramophone statuette, though, he plans to downplay it and hide it in a corner of his studio, hoping he can just act casual when someone notices it. 

"Or maybe I'll put it on a chain and wear it around my neck, just strut it," he said with a laugh.

The 61st annual Grammy Awards ceremony will be aired Feb. 10, 2019.