Liz Gillies Says Her Music Career Faced 'Endless False Starts.' How She's 'Opened the Floodgates' (Exclusive)

"I'm at a point in my life right now where I'm really able to focus on music, and I've made that choice," Gillies tells PEOPLE

• After "endless false starts," Elizabeth "Liz" Gillies is ready to officially launch her music career

• The former Victorious star will perform a series of shows at Café Carlyle in New York City this month

• "I have opened the floodgates to releasing music, and I'm not afraid to do so anymore," Gillies, whose new song "What You've Done" with Ferry Townes is out now, tells PEOPLE
  

Fans of Elizabeth "Liz" Gillies have waited a long time for music from the multi-talented performer. Now, she's ready to share it.

About a decade since the last time Gillies, 31, held a true solo performance, she's gearing up to do a series of shows at Café Carlyle in New York City from Nov. 6-9, ushering in a new musical era for the Dynasty star, who's looked forward to this moment for a while.

"It's actually been a lifelong dream of mine to have a show at [Café Carlyle], so when they approached me, I was just so excited," she tells PEOPLE of the Nov. 6 to Nov. 9 limited engagement. "I'm at a point in my life right now where I'm really able to focus on music, and I've made that choice."

Since Gillies launched her career as a teenager in 13: The Musical on Broadway, she's continuously showed off her powerhouse vocals in TV shows like Victorious, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Dynasty. But she's rarely shared original music outside acting projects, despite wanting to.

"My first and foremost goal was to get to Broadway," recalls the New Jersey native, whose "first taste" of the limelight was performing at the American Girl Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Then, she landed a part in 13 alongside best friend Ariana Grande, with whom she'd also go on to star in Victorious on Nickelodeon.

Fans of the teen sitcom grew to love Gillies as the rebellious Jade West, as well as the character's memorable pop songs, "Give It Up" with Grande, "Take a Hint" with castmate Victoria Justice and "You Don't Know Me," which she loved despite largely listening to more theatrical and classical music on her own. "A good song is a good song at the end of the day, and I think Victorious' music was great," she says.

Related: Victoria Justice Says It Was 'Nice' to 'Slow Down' After Teen Stardom on Zoey 101 and Victorious (Exclusive)

Once the series ended in 2013, Gillies and some of her castmates were signed to Columbia Records, and she began working on songs similar to what she performed as Jade — "not the music I wanted to make at the time," she says.

"I wanted to make singer-songwriter folk music," explains the artist, who wrote and recorded "a lot of Pink, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson-type songs" at the time. "But it just didn't feel entirely authentic to me, and it did not feel like the right time."

The record deal eventually dissolved, and Gillies only released music to accompany her acting for some time. However, she always wanted to dive deeper — especially as she started dating music producer Michael Corcoran, whom she met on Victorious and married in 2020.

Related: Elizabeth Gillies Recalls Rewatching Victorious with Ariana Grande After Quiet on Set Doc: We 'Reprocessed Everything'

"I was like, 'Oh, we're going to be like James Taylor and Carly Simon,'" she quips. "And it's like, no, that's not what's going to happen actually. We do write music together, and we have written a lot together, but we pick our moments."

The pair collaborated on music for Dynasty, but Gillies' solo artist dreams remained dormant. Fast-forward to the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic: she linked up with friend Seth MacFarlane for Songs from Home, an album of jazz standards, and they followed up the project with 2023's holiday collection We Wish You the Merriest.

Together, they toured the projects and performed on TV, giving Gillies a taste of how it feels to release music. "It was very exciting to get to do them with Seth and at that level, because the musicians he works with and the orchestra we play with, I mean, everybody is so top-notch," she says. "But I don't consider those my first and second albums."

Over the years, Gillies has continuously worked on music, and her vault of unreleased material is large at this point. But recently, a collaboration with fellow musician Ferry Townes proved fruitful enough to share.

"The goal was to write for me, so we were writing all these songs, and I noticed every time I was recording the demos, I would just turn Julia's background vocals up to the same level as mine," she says of Townes, whose real name is Julia Gargano. "I was like, 'These are not solo songs. These are duets.'"

In October, Gillies pulled the trigger and released "What You've Done," a beautifully reflective, conversational and acoustic guitar-laden duet between the two singers — and she's "so happy" to finally have original material out in the world.

"I have opened the floodgates to releasing music, and I'm not afraid to do so anymore," she says, teasing more to come. "it's not this sort of this big bad wolf anymore. It makes sense now to me, it feels very much like the right time, and it feels very natural. I'm trusting in the process and my feelings about it, and it's been very rewarding."

It may have taken Gillies a bit longer than expected to fully dive into releasing music of her own, but she's now at a point in her career where she's able to do it her way — which is also represented by her choice to perform at Café Carlyle, a 100-seat venue. "That is my sweet spot," she says.

Fans planning to attend the shows can expect to hear an eclectic setlist of Gillies' own material as well as musical theater and covers of artists like Julie London and Joni Mitchell. "The set list keeps evolving and keeps changing. Like, I just saw Joni Mitchell at the [Hollywood] Bowl, and now there's three more Joni songs," she says.

Reflecting on her long and windy musical journey, Gillies feels she's stuck to her guns — and thinks her teenage self would be proud. "I think she'd say, 'It took a while, bitch,' regarding the music, but she'd be happy that it's finally happening. I also think she would like this music, which makes me happy as well," she says. "I don't think she'd have any notes, actually."