Plenty of artists will say their whole world revolves around their music. With Hunter Hayes, it doesn’t sound like an exaggeration.

“I live, breathe to make this music in every way, shape or form,” Hayes enthused in a recent phone interview. “It’s funny when somebody asks me what I’m doing in my spare time when I’m not making music, and it’s like well, if I’m not on stage, I’m in the back of the bus in my little studio working demos or writing something so I can demo it so that I can play it live. It’s a big circle for me…I never get bored with it.”

That single-minded dedication to his musical life has helped him have a fast impact on the national country music scene. His 2012 self-titled album has topped one million copies sold and given him three number one country singles – “Wanted,” “Somebody’s Heartbreak” and “I Want Crazy.”

The latter single came from a deluxe version of the first album called “Encore.” That version included the original album and eight unreleased songs. It was released to coincide with Hayes’ first proper headlining tour last fall, which sold out all of its 25 dates.

For the 22-year-old Louisiana native, the chance to do his own headlining tour fulfilled a long-time ambition.

“This was something I’ve been praying and waiting for for a long time,” he said. “The stage, when you look at the vertical screen we have, keep in mind that was a drawing in my notebook when I was a freshman in high school. And all of these ideas we’ve thrown into the show are things I’ve been thinking about and dreaming about since I was practically in middle school. This is a product of a lot of time and dreaming. So if anything, it’s been nice to finally put this show on, to finally see it. It’s nice to finally get to headline and get to put on the show, to build the show, not just play a show, but to build an experience and try to make these moments, the way my favorite concerts have done for me.”

In all, Hayes has played more than 500 shows since 2011, opening for Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Lady Antebellum and several other top country stars before he did his fall headlining tour.

Between all of that activity, he found time to return to the studio with producer Dann Huff for a month in January 2013 to record the additional songs that appear on “Encore.”

But where doing a deluxe album with bonus tracks has become a way for many popular artists to extend the life of an album and generate more sales, Hayes said there was no real game plan behind the decision to record the tunes that eventually landed on “Encore.”

“At the time, there were sort of these songs that fell in between the cracks.” Hayes said. “There was sort of this time warp after the record was done being made (and) before it was released there were a lot of songs that I continued to write. Even after the record was released there were some songs that I wrote that by all means feel like they should have been part of the record. I think they would have disappeared had we not gone in and given ourselves the option of saying well, we can continue this story (of the first album).”

While many of the new songs fit with the mix of easy-going ballads (like “Wanted” and “Rainy Days”) and mid-tempo acoustic-laced country-pop tunes (“Somebody’s Heartbreak,” “If You Told Me,” “Faith To Fall Back On”) that defined the original self-titled album, two of the new tracks — “More Than I Should” and “Light Me Up” – brought more of a rocked up, electric side to Hayes’ sound.

“I wanted more energy, ” Hayes said. “I felt that was something we weren’t worried about when we made the original record.”

By year’s end, Hayes was ready to make his next musical statement.. He spent December and the early part of this year recording his second album, “Storyline,” which is targeted for a May release. The first single from the album, “Invisible,” was released on March 12, and he’s billing this spring’s run of concerts as the “We’re Not Invisible” tour.

Hayes describes the new single as being about people who at some point in their lives have felt they don’t fit in and essentially are invisible to others.

It’s a feeling Hayes knew well during his high school years, when he became immersed in music. He said he didn’t have a circle of friends, didn’t participate in many school activities and even skipped proms in favor of playing gigs. But he was well aware of the pressure to fit in.

“It’s always on your mind because you have no perspective. And in high school, that’s about the only thing you can really think about,” he said. “But at the same time, about half way through high school, I realized, because I had the benefit of getting to play out on the weekends, and I found my place. I had already kind of found my place (in life). But I realized it wasn’t important to fit in in high school As miserable as that might have been for the time, I just kept the hope that it would all make sense some day. And by the way, it has. But yeah, I loved what I did. I love what I do now, especially. And it’s always been that. It’s always been music.”

Hayes actually had already been all about music well before high school. He was all of two years old when he began playing instruments (he recorded all of the instruments on his self-titled album) and at age four, his unique talents led him performing the song “Jambalaya” with Hank Williams Jr. By age six, he had appeared on several national television programs, made a pair of videos and acted alongside Robert Duvall in the movie “The Apostle.”

Hayes’ parents, Leo and Lynette, supported their child’s musical interests from the start, right through his high school years, when he moved to Nashville in 2008 and landed his first publishing contract with Universal and when he got his record deal with Atlantic in September 2010.

“They were parents who were extremely supportive,” Hayes said. “Everything I got to do (as a child) was just by natural networking and getting to meet people and getting to play in front of this audience and this person was there and said ‘Hey, would you come play on this thing?’ Of course, it was a yes, and then that led to another thing and it was kind of a snowball effect, really. My folks basically learned whatever they could about the business really quick so they could manage what I was doing at the time, so they could protect me and they could take care of me.

“It was a strange world,” he said. “We had never been, nobody in my family had ever been a (involved) in the industry. So it was a learning process for all of us. I give them all the credit in the world for all of the sacrifices that they made and all the self-education they did just to see me get the opportunities to make music. That’s kind of how that story goes. I took a really big interest in the music and they were like ‘All right, cool. Here we go.'”