Aubrey Peeples, other stars of ABC’s ‘Nashville’ to sing at Venetian

They are actors who play singers on TV. So when they sing in real life, who are we seeing?

When “ABC’s Nashville in Concert” docks at The Venetian for one show Friday, will we be watching Aubrey Peeples or Layla Grant?

Or is there even a difference (as long as we’re just talking about the songs and not the talky parts)?

It gets confusing. But Peeples is happy to clarify.

“We might be singing some of the songs from the show, but we’re not going to be acting as our characters. We’ll be performing as us individually,” Peeples says of the short tour that teams her with fellow stars of “Nashville,” ABC’s soapy drama about life in the music mecca.

Filming a number for the series, “we have to think about the scene, and it’s not necessarily just performing a song how we would perform it,” she adds.

But onstage with Clare Bowen, Chris Carmack, Charles Esten and Jonathan Jackson, “you might hear some original songs, and you might hear some covers you would not hear on the show normally,” Peeples says. “So it’s really going to be us expressing ourselves in our own artistic sense as well.”

But the distinction between the 22-year-old singer and her character does get a little complicated, Peeples admits.

“A lot of the music that Layla has in the second half of the season is very similar to what I’ve been trying to write,” she says.

Offstage, Peeples says she is “mostly a blues-inspired artist” in her tastes and songwriting. The Florida native is a big fan of her home state’s blues-rockers, the Tedeschi Trucks Band. And her voice is in a lower, sultrier range, more like Bonnie Raitt (another favorite) than most country radio divas.

Peeple’s understated vocals are well-suited to the TV drama’s more somber, elegiac moments. But young fans also know her as the movie pop star of “Jem and the Holograms,” which came out before Layla was promoted from recurring to regular character for the current fourth season of “Nashville.”

“I like to think I have a very big voice. I’m classically trained and have been for 12 years now,” she says. “I definitely sing how I sing, but I would bring that to my style of music.

“I think in ‘Nashville’ I definitely pull back a lot, but I’m really inspired by Aretha Franklin and Billie Holiday and Mavis Staples, that kind of thing. I think you can have a big voice and still do blues and country.”

And last year’s country breakout, Chris Stapleton, made the doorway wider for everyone, she says. “What Chris Stapleton is doing for country music right now and for music in general is very inspiring. I know everyone says that, but it’s true. He’s just so based in a different (element of) soul and old country and blues.”

“Nashville’s” season finale airs May 25, and the cast was awaiting word this week on whether it will be renewed. In the meantime, the “Nashville” concert gives the co-stars an outlet to sing both solo and in various combinations.

Carmack has released an EP, “Pieces of You.” Jackson has long balanced his acting with the rock band Enation. Bowen’s duets with Esten and Sam Palladio have charted as country singles. Peeples met with record labels about cutting an album this year, but so far has no solid news on that front.

“All of us who are singers on the show have wanted a music career for a very long time,” she says.

“This is something that is very special to us,” she adds. “Even though we kind of found a backdoor and snuck in a little bit, it’s still something we’ve all very much wanted. We’ve all been writing a very long time. It might be an unconventional way to get here, but we’re all just very thankful for it.”

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.