The Musician Now Owns the Bar: Inside Tavana's Takeover of Anna O'Brien's

The best plot twist in Honolulu music this summer isn't a reunion tour. It's a bar changing hands — and the guy who took the keys is a working musician.

Anna O'Brien's has been a fixture on S Beretania in Mōʻiliʻili since 1969, when it opened as "Anna Bannanas," picking up its current name in 2010. For roughly sixteen years its most recent chapter belonged to operator Bill Comerford, a name any local player recognizes — Comerford was, in fact, the guy who first hired a young Tavana (Tavana McMoore) to play Waikīkī back in the musician's early twenties. This year Comerford retired. And in a bit of full-circle casting you couldn't script better, the kid he once put on a Waikīkī stage is the one who bought the place.

Here's the detail that should reassure anyone who's ever loved a dive bar and then watched it "change hands" into oblivion: it didn't close. Tavana soft-opened July 10, 2026, and rather than gut what worked, he split it. Downstairs stays the pub you know — still "Anna O'Brien's," still the Irish-dive DNA. Upstairs, the showroom gets a new name and a new mission: "Tavana's at Anna's."

That upstairs rebrand is the tell. This isn't a landlord flipping a lease; it's a performer building the room he'd want to play. The stated plan reportedly includes monthly open-mic nights and a live-music slate framed, in Tavana's own pitch, as an effort to unite the local scene — programming updates are flowing through Instagram at @tavanasatannas.

Why this matters more than a normal ownership shuffle: musician-run rooms tend to book like musicians think. They protect the openers. They make space for the weird Tuesday. They understand that an open-mic isn't a loss-leader — it's how a scene grows its next headliners. When the person signing the checks has stood on the stage sweating through a set, the whole ecosystem of a venue — soundcheck, backline, how you get paid, whether the green room is a supply closet — tends to get treated with a little more respect. Honolulu has plenty of rooms owned by people who love money. It has far fewer owned by people who love the gig.

There's also something quietly important about where this is happening. Mōʻiliʻili isn't Waikīkī — it's not a tourist-facing supper club or a resort ballroom. Anna's has always been a locals' room, a place where the audience is as likely to be other musicians as visitors. Handing that specific room to a specific musician with a specific "unite the scene" agenda is the kind of thing that either fizzles or quietly reshapes a city's music map. I'd bet on the second.

So consider this your early-adopter notice. The room is open. The mission is stated. The Instagram is live. Go up the stairs at 2440 S Beretania, catch whatever's on, and — if the plan holds — sign up for an open-mic slot and become part of the story instead of just reading about it.

The musician owns the bar now. Let's see what he does with it.

Sources: Meet the new face of Anna O'Brien's (Hawaiʻi Public Radio)