Ahead of 617 Day, a day in which WERS celebrates local talent and businesses, Web Service Coordinator, Fenton Wright, is sitting down with the artists performing to talk to them about what music and Boston means to them. Today we want to reacquaint you with Dave Herlihy, a local Boston legend with his band, O Positive, as he talks about his musical inspirations, streaming services, and the old Boston music scene.
Fenton: How has music kind of shaped overall you?
Dave: My most loved thing is music and singing and creativity and just making stuff up, and I’ve kind of come back to that after a long period away from music. During the pandemic. I wrote a lot of songs because I was at home, and then I had like 40 songs that I wrote when I couldn’t leave the house. And so then I just started to work with some friends. When some vaccines came around, I began to go to studios, and I made an EP in in 2023 that had this song called “The Invisible Girl” on there, which WERS played, and it had an EP and a few of the songs that I like a lot.
And then I’m making more music now and, you know, 2025, 2026 and so on. I’m doing shows and I so appreciate ‘ERS as part of the Boston music scene, because the music scene has changed unbelievably..
Fenton: Yeah, I’ve heard it, because what I experienced now I feel like I was like a college-aged kid in Boston. It’s way different than what it used to be. From what people tell me, at least they tell me that it used to be a lot more DIY punky a little bit, especially in certain areas. It feels acoustic and folk to me, at least at the places I’ve been.
Dave: Well, where’ve you been?
Fenton: I’ve been to junkyard, Sinclair, Lilypad
Dave: Lily pad is really good. Sally O’Brien’s, you ever go there? I’ve not been there. The Burren?
Fenton: I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t been there, but I’ve seen a couple of shows at Berklee.
Dave: 939, the Red room? Yeah, so it’s really weird. Fenton. You know, my daughter just graduated from Northeastern in 2025, and she loves music, and she didn’t go to clubs to see local bands. She went to house parties. And so she saw these cool bands who hadn’t made the jump to bars.
I mean, frankly, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, there were dozens of clubs in Boston that would regularly sell out with local and independent bands coming through. Back when I was your age, the only thing to do, the only way to meet people was to go to a music concert.
There was no there was nothing else. There was no social media. The only way to meet your friends you hadn’t met yet was to go to a club, to see a band you like. Because chances are, the people who also like the band you have a lot in common with.
And so then you meet people. So the clubs became the congregating places for people who loved music and would all listen to college radio like ERS and MBR and ZBC and UNB and Boston still has an incredible college radio scene, but it was also a part of the local music venues.
And so my daughter, who loves music, doesn’t go to see local bands in clubs, which I found to be mind boggling. I would go to several clubs a week when I was in college, you know, sometimes twice a night.
You know, in Kenmore Square alone, there was the Rat, you know, there was, uh, Storyville in Back Bay. There was like Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
Fenton: I’ve heard of a couple of those places.
Dave: Yeah, it was great. It was great. And it was really, really good. The pathway in those days was the same for everybody. You get together with people that you get along with enough to rehearse and to write songs, and to get good enough to go to a club on a Tuesday and you get your friends to come. You graduate to a Thursday and then maybe you get a later slot. And if that keeps happening, you can get gigs at more and more clubs.
If you don’t play too much, then you can get you a weekend and more and more people come and you can get bigger, and maybe you get signed to a local label and they make a record, and then the record goes into record stores and the record goes to radio stations. Everybody did that,
Now, it’s like TikTok! Do you use TikTok?
Fenton: I have an hour time limit on it. So, maybe once a week.
Dave: Oh, come on, you’re lying to me.
Fenton: I use it, like once a week, I promise you.
Dave: Come on.
Fenton: I use Instagram a lot, but I use TikTok like once a week. I guess kind of going to speaking about your music, how would you like to describe your genre? Because I know a lot of like, as you were mentioning, streaming services will say one thing, but it might not be how you feel.
Dave: I don’t know, I hope, to be honest, I think, me, I like a lot of kinds of stuff. I know that Spotify will pigeonhole you, you know? And so I guess it’s modern rock, right? Or indie sounding rock, I guess, as a thing. But I also like folk music. I like ambient music. I like, you know, all kinds of stuff. I like, you know, um, bluegrass music. And so I don’t think, but I basically try to write any kind of thing that I will like.
And so I don’t really think about it. Like when I was in O Positive, we just wrote songs that were working clubs. I never thought about my target market. I never thought about anything other than just writing songs I liked. And I still like those songs. When I hear an O positive song, It’s, “okay, I still like that,” which I’m really thrilled about.
To me, lyrically, I think about being in the moment and experiencing your life and empathy and fun and some joy. You know, I want it to be fun. I want, you know, kick ass guitar.
To me, songs are how you feel at a moment, and I don’t know about you, but there’s not one emotion that I have all the time. I’m not always rocking, you know? And I’m not always introspective. You know, or I’m not always rebellious, but sometimes I am.
Like with “Good Trouble.” I just see what I think is a straight, screwed up situation. And I wanted to write, write songs that expressed how I felt. And I didn’t want to write a pitying song or a woe is us song or preaching to the choir. I kind of wanted to write something anthemic or something like a call to action, and so I wanted to kind of connect on that level.
So I wrote music in the 80s for bars and for clubs and so.
But for 617 Day, we’re going to kick some serious butt. I’ve got a really good band. I’ve got the O Positive rhythm section, so it’ll sound like O positive. And I have a great guitar player, got background singers. It’s going to be a stomping, rocking show because that’s what I want to do. I want to leave a big footprint like a, you know, big dance print.
Fenton: I guess you kind of already touched on it, because you said you do what you’re feeling at the moment when you’re making a song. But do you have any specific musical inspirations, whether it be like artists or genres? How does that kind of come to you in the creative process?
Dave: Yeah, well it depends. I mean, every artist is a sum total of all the things that have moved them, right? And so whether it’s the Gang of Four or The Clash or the Beatles or Patti Smith or Bob Dylan or Brian Eno or U2, you know, or Hank Williams, you know, Peter Gabriel, all these things have affected me and have a really wide range of experiences. that I was a DJ at Boston College, and I was a kid,
I try to be emotionally attuned in the moment. I always think in service of the song, like, “What’s the song trying to do?” The song is not an excuse for me to play guitar solo. What is the song trying to do? What impact do I want to deliver? What’s the song asking for? Sometimes it’ll be a harmony, sometimes it’ll be a keyboard bass, sometimes it’ll be backing vocals or not.
I love the Beatles and I love the production of the Beatles. I love Echo and the Bunnymen, Gang of Four. I can get something from any kind of song. And so depending on what kind of song is coming to me in the moment, I’ll sort of grab the ingredients off my mental shelf, that makes sense for this particular recipe, right? And so I just really, um, but I have to like it.
But I also want it to be lyrically interesting. And so Bob Dylan, you know, or you know, Jack Kerouac or just anybody who strings together interesting words.
Fenton: Yeah, and just something I’m always curious about with artists in general. Is there anyone now, like modern artists that you just can’t stop listening to? For me, I know personally, it’s Geese, this band from New York. They’re addicting to me.
Dave: I like Geese. I also like Holly Humberstone.I love her voice. I saw Wet Leg. They’re fun. I think what I like listening to most is college radio. I listen because I like being surprised. I don’t really find myself listening to things that I like that I pick up on myself. But I’ll tune into ERS or I’ll tune into ZBC or NBR because the people are playing these songs because they love them. I like that a lot.
So I like listening to the radio. I listen to, you know, UMB, UMass Boston is also a great station. I sort of rely on DJ’s to play me stuff and sort of be surprised with what they like.
Fenton: Just in general, do you have anything you’d want readers or listeners who haven’t heard your music before to know about you before 617 Day or just in general going forward?
Dave: Just that I feel like music is a gift. I’ve been singing for a long time, and I love to sing, and I think that, you know, music is meant to be shared. I think music is also just something that is deeply powerful on so many levels. I just love to be around music, to experience music, to sing, to feel it vibrating in your chest, to dance around.
I’m continuing the tradition of what O Positive did back in the day, which is just playing music, for the joy of it and for the release of it. You get shivers down your spine. I guess what I try to do is just get shivers down my spine. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. You know, I still have driveway moments in my car where I can’t get out of the car. I pull in and I’m hearing something on the radio, and I just have to sit there.
I feel the same way about music now that I felt, you know, when I was 17. And I feel like I’m making music and I’m making now, I’m, I’m proud of and I love doing it. And I feel it’s just a great gift. And the more you give it, the more you get. You know, the giving is receiving. There’s an explosion that happens when people get together with music. And I just love to be able to do that. So I think that, you know, coming to the show, having fun.
Hope that helps! Thank you!
Fenton: I hope that 617 Day goes well for you!
