For TV viewers of a certain age, Scott Patterson is synonymous with his “Gilmore Girls” character Luke Danes, the curmudgeonly, flannel-clad, backward-baseball-cap-wearing diner owner forever bantering with Lorelai (Lauren Graham).
But before he was an actor, Patterson, 58, was an aspiring musician. Since “Gilmore Girls” ended its original run in 2007, he has been concentrating on building a music career and on Wednesday — two days before Netflix’s “A Year in the Life” sequel premieres — his band SmithRadio drops its first single, “Haha Song.”
The name of Patterson’s band hails back to summers spent in New York City as a teenager in the ’70s, where the South Jersey native would crash with his older sister and go out to clubs to listen to live music. He particularly idolized Patti Smith, and he and his friends would follow her to gigs around the city like the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village and even out to shows in Hempstead, LI.
“We were kind of groupies. I met her one night at CBGB. I walked up to her and interrupted a conversation she was having,” Patterson tells The Post. “I heard she was looking for a keyboard player, and I asked for an audition. It wasn’t balls at all — it was just gobsmacked, crazy in love with her, total respect and awe.
“She asked me how old I was and I said, ‘15.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’re a little young to join. We tour all over Europe.’ But she smiled and I went away and felt dejected,” he adds. “We left right after that and we were walking up the Bowery, and she came out and she grabbed me and she said, ‘Hey, good luck, OK. You’re gonna do fine.’ So I felt like I got blessed by Patti Smith.”
Patterson and his friends would continue to run into the singer-songwriter at various venues that summer, and he remains influenced by her music — even all these years later.
“[Back then] I would listen to Patti Smith’s concerts live on the radio on Sunday nights and dream about getting out of my circumstances and doing what I really wanted to do, which was play music,” he says. “So that’s why the name of the band, SmithRadio.”
The group consists of Patterson, who writes all the songs and plays guitar and lead vocals, as well as another guitarist, bassist, keyboard player and drummer. He calls “Haha Song” — which he’s releasing on his own label — a hybrid of punk, blues and soul. SmithRadio is currently in the studio recording an album and working on setting up a tour in Europe or Canada for 2017.
“It’s a big global sound. It’s not really straight punk; it’s not really blues. It’s flavors of that stuff,” he says. “Somebody like me, I’m not going to come out and start raging in a punk band. It’s a little more sophisticated a sound than I think people are going to be expecting.”