Former NY Gov. David Paterson has a band. We checked it out.

It was the night before the State of the State address, and some of New York’s most powerful elected officials were huddled shoulder to shoulder in a dimly lit bar.

The gathering was not about Gov. Kathy Hochul or her legislative agenda. It was about a different New York governor — one who was nervously awaiting his cover band’s Albany debut.

“People say, ‘You’ve spoken to audiences all over the world. Why would you be frightened?’” former Gov. David Paterson told Gothamist from his spot at the corner of the bar. “I said, when I spoke all over the world, I didn’t have a guitar in my hand.”

Paterson, a Harlem Democrat who left office in 2010, has his place firmly secured in the New York history books. He was the first Black governor. He was the first legally blind governor. He guided the state through a tumultuous period—and, in some cases, may have added to the tumult himself—after Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008.

At the bar this week, he made more history—as probably the first governor to front a cover band in the state capital.

These days, Paterson remains firmly entrenched in the world of New York politics, serving as a vice president for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation as it fights to build a multibillion-dollar casino project on Long Island.

But in his off time, he’s taken to singing and playing the guitar—a role that puts him front and center in his new-ish band, the cheekily named Blind Dog Dave and the Pirate Throng.

“There’s seven of us,” he said. “Seven stranded castaways.”

He started playing a few years ago, in the early days of the pandemic. He said he and his wife were trying to come up with creative ways to bide their time while everything was shut down.

Paterson said he took some guitar lessons in high school but they didn’t stick. His wife suggested he call Dan Smith—he of the Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar fliers plastered around New York City—and he did. A few weeks into his lessons, Paterson played some…