Imagine your name has just been announced at the CMA Awards as New Artist of the Year. Celebrities seated around you in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, the ones you admired as you were growing up, are applauding. Thousands of fans throughout the venue are cheering. Millions are watching you on live TV. What goes through your mind at that moment?

For Hunter Hayes, who received this honor at the 2012 Awards, the first reaction was something like disbelief. “I looked at my manager, Ansel Davis,” he recalled. “We had a meeting the next day, and he said, ’You know what you said to me when they called your name?’ I said, ’No, I don’t.’ He said, ’Yeah, I figured that. You looked at me and asked if they had really called your name.’”

Hayes laughed as he recounted that moment. “The whole thing was a blur, but I completely believe that. That’s so something I would do!”

This reflects the boyish side of this gifted young singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Just 21 years old, he radiates enthusiasm, whether doing interviews (ending, in this case, by assuring the writer that “you rock!”) or delivering a blistering live set. In the midst of a sentence, he seems to be racing in his mind to the following paragraph. As he wraps up one song onstage, he’s mentally into the next, ready to attack the opening riff or lyric.

But in that magical moment at the CMA Awards, another side to Hayes kicked in, one that tempers his energies with a discipline that belies his age but reflects his already considerable experience. When cameras focused on him and his fellow nominees just before the winner was declared, he recalled, “I was thinking, ’OK, you have to look professional right now. You’ve got to look cool. Contain the excitement. Contain the nerves. Don’t shake. Don’t freak out.’ I honestly just assumed that the nomination was all I had to think about. I was just stoked to get the nomination. I know everybody says that, but it’s such a huge compliment. Never in my wildest dreams would I have believed somebody if they’d told me, ’Hey, by the way, you’d better be ready for your acceptance speech.’ I would have laughed at them.”

Characteristically, Hayes was ready anyway. “I knew that in the one-in-a-million chance that I would do what I’d have to do, I wanted to look like I had my stuff together,” he said, smiling. “So I figured out a system. I knew that I could look at my hands and count the major categories (of people to thank) on my 10 fingers. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to remember names at that moment of being a pure nervous wreck, if it did happen. But I did want to make sure that I got through all the members of my team and all the people I love and respect and that I didn’t leave anybody out.”

In a sense, Hayes has been getting ready since early childhood for this year of CMA recognition, his debut at LP Field during CMA Music Festival, his performance on “The Grammy Nominations Concert Live!!” and nominations in three Grammy categories — more than any other Country artist received. Growing up an only child in Breaux Bridge, La., he began playing music at age 2, mainly to pass time. His decision to acquaint himself with every instrument within reach proved useful once he was old enough to start recording.

“I learned as many instruments as I could partially because I got bored with one and wanted to try something else,” he said. “That was the only way I could make my demos. I didn’t have bands around. So I made my demos by myself.”

He was good enough at 4 to begin playing in a local band — and lucky enough to accept an invitation from Hank Williams Jr. to join him onstage for a performance of “Jambalaya.” “We met at a bed-and-breakfast in south Louisiana,” Hayes recalled. “I have a friend in Breaux Bridge who owns a bed-and-breakfast where Hank would come and hang out every now and then. He would jam with the local musicians, and that’s how I met him.”

A video of their performance can be seen on YouTube, with Williams towering over and then kneeling next to the earnest, tow-headed kid who sings the tune, solos on a Cajun button accordion and pumps his knees to the beat, Hank Sr. style. What’s obvious in this footage is Hayes’ seriousness, his determination to nail every note and maybe look past this gig to what would follow in the years ahead.

By the time he was 6, Hayes made a cameo appearance in The Apostle, whose scriptwriter, director and star Robert Duvall gave him his first guitar. Within four years, Hayes had recorded his first two albums. In high school, he began writing songs and, again looking forward, made his first visits to Nashville. Eventually, his family moved there with him.

“Then it was a matter of making connections,” Hayes explained. “I started the negotiation process with Universal Music Group Publishing before we moved. Mom found a house so I could register in the school district I wanted to be in. I took an accelerated course to finish high school before I would have even gone into my senior courses. And that was that: I started writing full time. My first co-write was with Luke Laird — can you believe that? The pressure was on. That was my job.”

John Esposito, President/CEO, Warner Music Nashville, remembers well when Hayes first popped onto his radar screen. Shortly after arriving in Nashville, he asked Scott Hendricks, Senior VP, A&R, “’Who are you hiding in the drawer behind you?’ That’s the expression for the CDs A&R people always have that are not quite ready,” Esposito said. “Scott says, ’I’ve got one. This kid’s so talented, it’s unbelievable.’ I said, ’Well, can I hear it?’ He said, ‘It’s not quite ready.’ Now, Scott has one of the greatest sets of ears I’ve met in this town, so I said, ’Come on. If you’re excited about it, I want to hear it.”

The deal was sealed, according to Esposito, during the Leadership Music class of 2009, in which he was a classmate of Hayes’ manager, Ansel Davis. “I decided I was going to corner Ansel every time I had a chance during those Friday gathering where no communication devices were allowed,” he said. “I was relentless, saying, ’I’m not letting you go until we’re in business together.’ Ansel is a great guy, and I’m quite sure he felt my passion for Hunter.”

Hayes recorded every instrumental part on his Platinum-certified, self-titled album for Atlantic Records, even teaching himself in the studio to play some steel guitar, which he’d never touched before, for the key lick in “Everybody’s Got Somebody But Me” (written by Hayes, Dave Brainard and Jennifer Zuffineti). He also wrote or co-wrote all 12 tracks, including the Platinum-selling single “Wanted” (Hayes and Troy Verges).

Despite his crossover appeal and his willingness to explore new ideas, Hayes insists that Country will always remain his foundation. “It’s a lyrical thing,” he mused. “Any chance I get to throw in a Resonator or a banjo, I will. You can define it by that, but I define it most by the storytelling — how the song relates, what it means to someone. One of my favorite records was Rascal Flatts’ Me and My Gang because it had ’Stand’ (Blair Daly and Danny Orton) on it. I listened to ’Stand’ every day when I left school because I was having a hard time. That’s what I needed. I needed that message. I needed that song. That song helped me through a lot. My goal is to always remember that when I write.”

He also promises to remember the drive that helped him to achieve the goals he has harbored since he was old enough to stand up and sing into a microphone. And you can bet that even as he wraps whatever project he’s working on, he will already be blueprinting the next one.

“Someone asked me yesterday if there was a certain pressure that came with this (CMA) Award,” Hayes said. “It’s actually more of a reminder that, as a new artist, I’m constantly searching and trying to figure things out. I’m always a little bit clueless and a little bit reckless in this search for something to creative. It’s a reminder for me to stay that way forever, because my favorite artists are constantly searching and changing … to keep being clueless!

“Blue sky?” he asked. “I want 30 buses and 20 trucks. I want to be headlining at stadiums. I want to get there whenever I can and do it for the rest of my life. I’ve always wanted to get on a bus and play music every night and then get back on that bus and keep playing music. That’s my dream.”

By Bob Doerschuk
Used by Permission © 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.