Hunter Hayes

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Hunter Hayes Has A One Track Mind! The Life of Someone Who Eats, Sleeps, and Breathes Music!

By: Susan J. Yeager

There is a term used in the music industry where artists are referred to as “The total package.” This generally means that a performer can sing, play at least one instrument relatively well, possibly write a few good songs, and yes, they are generally good-looking too. To say that Hunter Hayes is the total package is a huge understatement. It’s more like he’s the total package, the ribbon tied around it, and the delivery guy that brings it to your doorstep.  It’s a good thing that Hunter eats, sleeps and breathes music because it’s pretty obvious that he was put on Earth to create and perform and share this with the world.

We catch up with Hunter on his very first night as opening act for Rascal Flatts on their 2012 “Thaw Out” tour.  Hunter is friendly and relaxed and if there are any nerves about taking the stage in front of thousands of people in a couple of hours, we don’t see a trace of them.  If anything, there is a “let me at ‘em’” vibe as the twenty year old talent has been off the road for the holidays.  There’s no trace of arrogance… this is simply just what Hunter does.

“I don’t think there was ever a sort of ‘wake up one morning’ moment,” Hunter says about deciding to actively pursue music as a career.  “I wish I knew because I’d write a book about it right?” he jokes. 

“I was just really into music as a kid and when I say I ‘into music,’ there was something about it that just moved me.  Nobody in my family is musical.  So it had to be something just ‘inner.’   I’m just passionate about it.  I remember watching people like Garth Brooks as a kid. I was in to music before that, but once I saw that, I was like ‘Yeah! I want to do that!’  I want to play on a stage so big you can’t put it in a room!”

“I fed that hunger ever since then,” he continues.  “My parents would buy me instruments and I asked for certain things.  They would buy other instruments that I didn’t have because I wanted them. I got to play out on the weekends.  Sit in with this band at fairs and festivals around Louisiana, my hometown. Eventually that band became mine. I started fronting it at like six or seven. I just wanted to play all the time. I sort of fed the addiction, if you will, of music.”

The ambitious musician kept finding new ways to express himself musically.  “I just kept playing, kept jamming.  [I] found songwriting, found the studio to be something that I really loved. I married the two and the sort of demo process. I didn’t have a studio to go into so I kind of got my own studio gear. It just kind of went from there. It just kind of snowballed into this obsession, this 24 hour thing that I love.  It’s kind of the way I breathe and live.”

As the story goes, Hunter was given a toy accordion by his grandmother for his second birthday.  The instrument just somehow made sense to him and by the age of four, he was being invited to share the stage with musical icons like Hank Williams, Jr. at huge festivals. The YouTube video of one such performance has had over a million views.  Music was becoming a huge part of Hunter’s life before he could even take the training wheels off a bicycle.

Though some of the big moments were for television or recorded on video, Hunter doesn’t remember much about them.  “That was really before I had a working memory,” he reasons.  “I remember certain things about them. I can tell you specific things… stories that not even my parents remember… weird things.  But I don’t remember the whole picture. I don’t remember what it was like.”

Recent gigs have caused some more memories to come to the forefront.  “Stepping into the Ed Sullivan Theater a couple of months ago, I remembered that feeling of being at a talk show.  I remembered being there as a kid.  In fact, we taped a pilot at that very theater that never aired but I was in there and I remembered it.”

“It’s weird because there was this gap,” he confesses. “There was that as a kid, sort of my childhood if you will, on TV or whatever and then there was this gap.  My parents said that it was their goal to give me time to figure out whether that was what I wanted to do. So we took a year off from touring. From touring, I mean, we played on the weekends.  We took a year off from doing that.  I was miserable. I remember that’s the year that I actually wrote the most, I spent the most time in the studio.  That was my most productive year in studio/writing mode.  After that, we sort of got back into it. I started looking into moving to Nashville.  It was official. This is what I wanted to do.  After that summer, my parents realized that this is all I wanted to do.”

Though he seems so young, actually putting a record out took time for the already accomplished musician.  “It’s a long story of how it actually came about,” he says when asked about his record deal with Atlantic Records.  “It wasn’t like I met one person and the next day I signed.  This was a three year process.  It was a three year process based on the people I met when I first moved to Nashville.  They were really supportive. People like Scott Hendricks. Ansel Davis, my manager was one of them. Then on to meeting people like Craig Kallman and then John Esposito, who’s now the head of the Nashville office.  It’s meeting all of these people that stuck out to me.  They really believed, the first day that I met with them.  They held the demo and we’re like, ‘Yeah we get it.”  I felt like they understood it and they were really supportive.  It’s just going to happen. It’s just a matter of when. It’s a matter of how. They gave me something to believe in myself with.  I had nothing but my own work that I was listening to. These critical people like Cyndi Foreman my publisher even; they solidified my belief in myself. I had something to hold onto and it was a long process.”

 “I graduated high school and then immediately went into songwriting.  I knew I was writing for my first record.  That was my goal.  I think with that in mind, it took us a couple of years to solidify everything.  Once it did, it started moving and when it started moving, it moved FAST!  The record process took six months but still, that felt like just a day and half to me.  I could also say that it also felt like it took forever.  I kind of wish that I’d had more time in the studio.  It was just kind of a collaboration of events… all doors opening at the right time and things happening at the right time.  I don’t know… things beyond my control.”

During the whole process, Hunter ended up writing songs that would be recorded by Rascal Flatts and Montgomery Gentry.  How did he know which songs to give away and which ones to keep for himself? “When we pitched, for instance, ‘Play,’ to Rascal Flatts,” he begins, “Which, by the way is still a sort of a process for me to think about ‘Oh my gosh! I’m on tour with them!’” he says smiling at the irony.  “When we pitched it to them, we were way out from making a record and I knew that.  I think the whole team knew that.  I jokingly said, ‘Hey, this would be a great Rascal Flatts cut!’ My publisher pitched it, they liked it.  They put it on their record. It was perfect timing in that I knew I was a ways out and it was very heavily influenced by them.  Obviously, I listen to them.  I’m a huge fan! From ‘Praying for Daylight,’ I’ve had every record they’ve made and I know every song they’ve recorded.  It was heavily influenced by them and it was a dream of mine to get a cut on their record. It was perfect timing I guess.”

“Even that song was technically written for my record.  I think that we were far enough from it that we knew that we had enough time to write more.  I wasn’t really concerned about ‘keeping’ anything. I was writing four or five songs a week.  This was every week of the year.  I knew that we’d have time to collect more. I’d have time to figure out what my sound would be if I would ever figure it out.  I knew that we had more time so I was okay with letting a couple go. The one for Montgomery Gentry was a different thing from what I was used too. It was a very different song from what I normally write, so I was like ‘Yeah, it fits them, probably at this point, more than it fits me.’”

With the time to record his album at hand, Hunter had to decide which songs to include on his debut.  “It’s funny because I used to have that checklist” he states.  “I used to have that thing where it was like ‘I need this, I need this’ I need this,’” he says of his plans going into the song selection process.  “I completely let go of that.  We got about half way through and I realized I was just picking songs to pick songs.  It was a very long, lengthy process.”

Somewhere through it all, Hunter realized that his biggest goal for the project was simply for it to be real and honest.  “It involved a lot of people, but it basically came down to me saying ‘No! I absolutely do not like this song because it doesn’t speak from where I am in my life.’ Yes, I would love it for my record, in fact there was a song called ‘I Just Do,’ that I’m very attached too.  It will probably never go on any of my records because it doesn’t relate to where I actually am.  It was a song I loved! I wrote my heart out for it but at the same time, it wasn’t real and it wasn’t honest. I wanted honesty and I wanted realness. I wanted people to know who I was by listening to the record.  I had a great team behind me that listened to the tracks and kept that in mind and picked the songs for the same reasons.  We all met at the last minute as we’re setting up stuff in the studio, we’re talking about, well we know “Storm Warning,” we know this, this, and this… probably the songs we’re doing in the set tonight, we already knew. After a long process, we just said ‘Okay, look… these are the ones that speak to where I’m at now.”

The result is a twelve song, self-titled debut album that rotates between toe-tappin’, roll the window down, up-tempos like his first single “Storm Warning,” and the infectious, “Love Makes Me,” to ballads about intense heartbreak like “Rainy Season,” and “What You Gonna Do.” Track number two, a sweet slow song called “Wanted,” says all the things that ladies want to hear. It’s sure to be successful at dances when trying to pull that special someone out onto the floor.

It seems kind of funny that such a seasoned musician didn’t really think about his live show when choosing material.  “There’s a time and a place to get into ‘live’ mode,” he explains.  “To get into rehearsal and say ‘Hey, maybe we are short a couple of fast songs. No worries! We’ve got this!’  We have a couple of other songs that didn’t make the record but they’re used for other purposes that we use live. I knew that the live show would take care of itself and the record needed to do the same.”

Hunter is one of the artists that completely embraces the Internet age and is extremely present on Facebook and Twitter. His official site posts videos made by Hunter for his fans that keep them updated on basically his every move.  With honesty and realness being the goal for songwriting, does Hunter ever worry about letting people know too much about him?  “I’m so shy… I have a natural barrier at some points and then at some points I don’t.  There’s sort of a ‘where do you draw that line’ kind of thing. I don’t think I’ll ever really figure it out.  I’m a naturally shy guy so naturally, I have a lot of sort of hesitations.  I think the closer we get to finishing a weekly video, the more I let down… the more I let go and I’m just like ‘You know what? I want people to know that about me!’ I kind of have to let go of a couple of things… because it’s like ‘No! I don’t want them to know I’m a germ-a-phobe! Then it’s like forget it… ‘they know!’ I’m getting used to that because my songs do that! So it’s okay to let down those walls a bit and let people in. I want them to feel like they know me.  At the end of the day, that’s my priority so that’s how I’m able to sort of let go of some things.”

Through the videos, fans really get to see what living on the road is like for a touring musician. We asked Hunter what he brought with him on the road to keep from getting homesick.  His answer might surprise you.  “This time, I went all out. We just got a new bus and I have the back-lounge to myself.  I did that because I do all the video editing, I do a lot of writing on the road now.  It’s going to help a lot for me to be productive, as opposed to running all over the bus. [I bring] my laptop, my iphone is pretty much the heart of my life.  I’ve got friends that painted art for me, so I’ve got pieces from friends and family with me.”

“The bus is kind of home as it is,” he says sincerely.  “I take pictures of the bus to save on my IPhone, so when I’m not on it… I’m remembering how much fun I had on it and looking forward to getting back on it! I think it’s reverse for me, actually. My laptop screen saver for a while was the new bus… before I actually saw it and got in it for the first time.  I was looking so much forward to getting back on the road.”

Hunter spends so much time on the road… one of his new skills is packing! “I’m at the point now where I live on the bus, so I condense to pack to go home! I know I’m only going to be there for two days.  I’ve got the packing scheme down. I’ve got a system.  I used to not be so good at it.  I remember the first time we took off for a couple of weeks… I took like six bags on the road because I was so scared because I didn’t know what I would need.  After being on the road, you figure out what you need and what you don’t need… where the Walmarts are!  It took a while to get used to how to pack. I’m still learning.”

Speaking of learning, Hunter is making the most of his time on the road with artists like Rascal Flatts and Taylor Swift.  “Oh heck yes! Absolutely!” he exclaims when asked if he will be in the arena, watching Rascal Flatts’ set that night.  “I am so looking forward to seeing their show, just as much as playing mine! I take all kinds of mental notes.  I’ve got dreams! I’ve got crazy ideas for when I get to do the headlining arena thing.  I was just talking to my manager about it today.”

“I don’t know if I could categorize or list the things I’m looking at,” he continues.  “I’m constantly watching these things and taking it all in and dreaming. I think it’s more me trying to put together my picture of my dream of what it’s going to look like when I’m here, then it is sort of trying to figure out things.  Trying to see what it actually looks like being to be on the road in arenas every night so that I can imagine what it’s going to be like for me.”

Hunter appreciates the down-to-earth attitude the guys in Rascal Flatts maintain.  “I think the advice that I get from these guys is just watching.  Like, Jay just ran through the halls and was like, ‘Hey man! How’s it going? So good to have you guys on the tour. We’re looking forward to it!’  That alone is a good thing for me to see.  Those guys have been extremely successful.  We’ve met. We’re friends, but he kind of stopped and checked out the set and we talked.  I think that’s better than any advice you can get is to have an example like that. Taylor was a good one,” he says of Taylor Swift who he toured with last year.  “She was a great example.  You watched her and you felt her presence.  It’s like, I wanna be like that!’”

Sometimes the authentic moments catch Hunter off-guard.  “I sat in Taylor’s dressing room. She had her Starbucks cup and her IPhone out and we were just chit-chatting about the tour and I was thanking her.  We were just hanging out and it was like, ‘Wow! I just sat in the room with one of my heroes!’  We’re buddies now. It’s surreal! I’m still a little star-struck and I’m okay with that!  I wanna be exactly where I am. I’m a huge fan! I’m still star-struck when the Flatts’ guys come around.  I’ve met them and hung out but they are still musical icons to me!”

Other influences include country greats.  “Vince Gill, I got to play with him this past summer, he was really cool.  Keith! Keith’s been a huge inspiration to me. Obviously, I’m a guitar player so I gravitate towards another guitar player.   We’ve hung out a lot and he’s shown me around the backstage and let me play some of his guitars through his amps. Just little things like that that makes somebody like me who’s obviously a huge Keith Urban fan, just respect him all that much more!”

“Dan Huff, I co-produced the record with, is one of my musical heroes.  I’ve studied his work for years, especially with the Flatts and Keith.  Still, after working with him for six months, I’m a huge fan! I just respect him.”

When he’s not working on music, you will probably find Hunter with a camera in hand.  “The videos, actually, I think, are my biggest hobby!” he says about what fills his spare time.  “My favorite hobby [is] photography and all that kind of stuff.  When I was a kid, I did a lot of video editing and mini-movie making. I think I’ve actually found an outlet for it and that’s those weekly webisodes.  We’ve got a plan this year; my New Year’s resolution is to make more of those.  I think that’s kind of my hobby on the road.  Last night I stayed up editing the one that should be out today.  That’s kind of my favorite pastime.”

Hunter has been slowly building a large and loyal fan base and he can’t say enough about the people who support him and his music.  “My fans are great in that they are very mutli-media based.  So they’re on facebook. They’re on twitter. They’re spreading the word.  I love it when they make videos of their weekends, coming to all three shows. I love that! Talking about it on Facebook and Twitter… just spreading the word… sharing their experiences,” it all helps him gain success as an artist he says.  

“It also helps me when they respond to songs on the record or lyrics on the record because that’s how things like my new set came about.  We picked lyrics, based on lyrics that I like, but lyrics that they like from the record. It also helps me get inside what they like, what’s relating to them.  The priority is to be honest. Number two, I want them to find a song in this set, I want somebody in this audience tonight to hear a song that we’re doing and say ‘Oh my Gosh… I love that song because that totally speaks to where I’m at!’ That’s one of my biggest goals and dream is that my music means something to someone else.  I think it’s great one, when they share their experiences and two, when they give me feedback from songs they like and tell me what they like about them.”

“Country music fans are awesome and I know because I am one of them!” he proclaims.  “I stood in line for Flatts’ the first year they went to Fan Fair.  I stood in line to get their autograph. I remember how cool they were when I met them the first time and how they remembered me when I was standing at the back of a meet and greet line the second time I met them.  I’ve been among the crowd. From my perspective, I’ve seen fans a hundred times. They go to every show they can! They don’t just sort of go to a show and say ‘Aw, I’ve seen it!’  The coolest thing is that they’re singing along to every song that they can possibly find.  Not just songs from the record! They’re singing a long to every song from the record but they’re also, at our headlining shows, they’re singing along to songs we haven’t released.  We’ve done them maybe three times and they’re on YouTube, but they know ‘em! That’s huge to me! That’s what I live for!”

Hunter is on track to make a lasting impression on music fans around the world.  He writes songs that resonate with people of all ages because of their universal themes of love and heartache.  He’s more than proficient on too many instruments to name and he is training with the best in the business.  Perhaps most importantly, he has the right attitude about staying in touch with the fans and being as real as he can with them. It’s a good thing his future in country music looks bright.

“I don’t have any back-up plans. I don’t have a ‘Plan B,’” he confesses.  “It scares me but I think that’s when you perform you best, when you’ve got something to… not prove… but when you’ve got something to lose.  One of my favorite sayings is that ‘We’re most creative when we run out of options.’  The same sort of law applies.  This is the only thing I can do.  So I’d better be good at it!  I’d better do it right! I think that’s kind of what fuels me is that this is the only thing that I want to do.  I have to do this! This is my life. This is what I love.  I think it’s going to be that way.” We don’t think Hunter has anything to worry about.  It’s pretty clear that he was born to make music and we’re just thankful he’s sharing it with the rest of us!

Find out more about Hunter and watch more of his webisodes here:

http://www.hunterhayes.com/

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