DENVER — The Meadowlark isn’t exactly the big time. It’s a brick-and-stone-walled basement club, capacity 72, with a bar occupying half the room and a barely raised stage where three’s a crowd. Sipping a $2 Bud Light during a happy hour in January, Wesley Schultz, the singer and guitarist in the Lumineers, fondly looked the place over.

Not so long ago, in 2010, he recalled, the Lumineers would play the Meadowlark’s open-mike night “every Tuesday religiously.” At that point the Lumineers were the songwriting team of Mr. Schultz on guitar and the drummer Jeremiah Fraites, usually just shaking a tambourine. (Mr. Fraites had already begun wearing his trademark suspenders.)

The Meadowlark was a gathering place for the musicians in Denver’s close-knit music scene — a place where the Lumineers would run into local folk-pop heroes like the songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff and the band Paper Bird. And there, two songs at a time, the Lumineers were building the local following that would begin the band’s momentum toward its current Top 10 single, “Ho Hey,” and two nominations at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, for best new artist and best Americana album.

A few days later the Lumineers were in New York, rehearsing for “Saturday Night Live.” At NBC’s Studio 8H Mr. Fraites dismissed the band’s chances at being named best new artist; the other nominees are Alabama Shakes, Fun., Frank Ocean and Hunter Hayes.