The music never stops at The Burren. The wooden booths are filled with the warmth of easy company and free-flowing drinks. The coatroom, far too small for the crowds that fill the bar, always becomes a chaotic tower of jackets by night’s end. A stone’s throw from Tufts in Davis Square, The Burren beckons students and locals alike.
That could all change soon. An upcoming apartment development project threatens to change the pub for years to come. But while The Burren’s future remains unknown, its legacy is made permanent in the minds of generations of Jumbos. The Burren has defined Tufts nightlife for decades, making it a spot worth reminiscing about.
Tommy McCarthy owns The Burren with his wife, Louise Costello. Born in London to Irish parents, McCarthy moved back to Ireland as a child and has family roots in County Clare and County Galway. The Burren’s name originates from the rocky karst region of County Clare. His father was a traditional Irish musician, as is his wife, whom he met playing music at a pub in the States.
McCarthy told me a story from when he first arrived in Boston. After spending time in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia in 1986, his father told him to connect with fiddler Larry Reynolds up in Boston. After playing together at the Village Coach House in Brookline, Reynolds invited McCarthy to play with him at a party on the Cape. It turned out to be Rose Kennedy’s birthday party.
“I end up staying for like three days. [Reynolds] left me there because I started hanging out with all the Kennedy cousins, and they’re like, ‘Don’t go anywhere, let’s play more music,’” McCarthy laughed.
In 1994, while living between Boston and Ireland, McCarthy was asked to fill in for the lead violinist of the Irish band Arcady for their U.S. tour. Following their performance at the Somerville Theatre, the band tried to find somewhere to socialize, but at only 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday, every place — save for Johnny D’s — had already closed.
“The first thing that occurred to me was, ‘You’ve got this beautiful theater that holds almost 1,000 people, and where do people go before or afterwards?’” McCarthy said.
The band ended up at the Rosebud, but the idea for a pub lingered. Later, when he and his wife, Louise Costello, were staying in Brighton, McCarthy took a day to walk around Davis Square and seriously consider Elm Street for a pub. With that, The Burren was born.
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The Burren may not be a student bar by design, but every Thursday night, it becomes an unofficial Tufts gathering spot. Senior Vir Bhatia is one among the masses of students descending on Thursdays, typically visiting from 11 p.m. to midnight.
“I like walking in and bumping into six other groups of people who are my friends, who I didn’t know I was going to see there,” he said. “You hit a good round of daps, some good hugs. ‘Valerie’ is playing.”
For Bhatia, the two key factors to a great “Burren Thursday” are the quality of the backroom band and how many people are there. “The third eternal criteria is, ‘How drunk am I?’” Bhatia said.
Asked what they love about The Burren, almost everyone I spoke to pointed to the live music. McCarthy told me that he hopes Massachusetts Avenue might become for the Boston area what Bourbon Street is to New Orleans. In addition to The Burren, McCarthy and Costello run The Bebop near Berklee College of Music and are opening McCarthy’s and Toad in Porter Square.
“I’d love to see some stage music all the way from Davis Square to Berklee,” McCarthy said. “We put a bit of music in here, [people] might turn off the televisions, stop watching politics and rubbish and bring us back to a normal way of life.”
Though I tend to make my appearances at The Burren on Thursday nights, I shook things up and went on a Monday night instead to check out the weekly Irish session. In the corner near the front bar, a crowd of at least 20 musicians were packed into a booth that could comfortably fit five. The players were turned inwards, facing each other instead of the crowd, with a couple of drinks on the table. I wanted to draw closer to see what was happening on the inside. McCarthy told me he first met his wife while playing at an Irish session at Kinvara. Watching this session, I could understand exactly how this happened.
“[A session] is like a good conversation,” McCarthy said. “You sit around the table, and if you’ve got boring people, the conversation is going to be boring. If you’ve got good musicians, the session is going to be great.”
That night, I met Helen Kuhar, an Irish tenor banjo and rhythm guitar player. Originally from Seattle, Kuhar moved to Boston to study stage management at Emerson College and attended her first session at The Burren four years ago.
“[The Burren is] a legendary establishment in terms of live music in general but especially Irish music,” Kuhar said. “You will come here and see people you know and love and play amazing music literally any night of the week.”
Standing in the crowd listening to the session, I talked to Haleigh Black, who’d come up from Birmingham, Ala., to tour for her album “Bend.” Kuhar encouraged Black to come along with them for her first-ever visit. “I’m so excited by The Burren,” she said. “I don’t know what to do, because I am enjoying just listening to the music, but I also want to be part of it.”
In the same corner of the bar, I met Gwen Johnston, a public school art teacher and professional musician. Johnston became interested in Irish fiddle music after seeing a busker in England and started attending The Burren’s Irish sessions in 2023.
“This place is really where I got my start playing in Boston sessions, and it’s been a really important place to me,” Johnston said. “I’ve made friends here, had heartbreaks here.”
Later in the night, I struck up a conversation with Pat Regan. He had a thick Irish accent and was visiting his son in Boston. Like McCarthy, he’s from County Galway. “[My son] plays here every Monday night,” Regan said to me. “It’s his only connection with the [Irish people]. There’s a good few here.”
The Burren’s atmosphere seemed to strike a chord with Regan, especially the pictures of Ireland and the musicians. This was his third time visiting the pub. “They’re clever people, really, because if you were an immigrant, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by some of those pictures,” he told me.
McCarthy’s wife is responsible for all the pictures that cover The Burren. Every time I go, I see something interesting on the walls I’ve never noticed before.
“I think a lot of the pictures that were up there 20 years ago are still there,” McCarthy said. “If you put a picture of someone up there, and then they go back to Ireland [and say], ‘My picture’s on the wall!’ and you take it down, they come back, they won’t be too happy.”
The familiar booths have their own memorable backstory. While painting a home near Harvard Square, McCarthy spotted built-in seating he loved. “I always had it in my head: If I ever opened up a pub, I’d use that style of bench,” he said. So, when he finally opened The Burren years later, he knocked on the door of that house with a carpenter and asked to take measurements.
The old instruments around the bar are real instruments that symbolize the importance of live music to The Burren, and the importance of The Burren to live music. Some come from musicians; others come from an instrument dealer named Jack Griffin in North Cambridge.
“As soon as he hears I’m opening another pub, calls me, ‘I got some instruments for you,’” McCarthy said. “He’s not looking for any money from it. It makes him feel proud that his instruments are hanging in our bars.”
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I had the chance to visit McCarthy’s newest pub in Porter Square under renovation. From the moment I stepped inside the construction site, it felt like an unmistakable extension of The Burren, with the familiar benches and orangey walls greeting me. Yet, there was an undeniable freshness to it. What struck me first were the large windows that stretched across every wall. The corner lot’s building seemed almost designed to invite passersby in, as if the entire street was a part of the bar’s extended space. The windows were like an unspoken invitation: Look inside, feel the energy and come be part of it.
Rest assured, McCarthy’s will have live music, just like The Burren before it. “When we opened The Burren, it brought a lot of life,” McCarthy said. “We turned the lights on in Davis Square.”
