LOS ANGELES — After two years of pandemic-driven delays, the veteran L.A. indie-rock band Best Coast was so ready to hit the road in January that they'd named their 25-date cross-country tour "Finally Tomorrow." It'd been 22 months since the duo — guitarist-vocalist Bethany Cosentino, 35, and guitarist Bobb Bruno, 48 — had released its most recent LP, "Always Tomorrow." Like most working-class musicians playing clubs and theaters, they and their usual team (five band members, two crew, a merch seller and a bus driver) had gone that whole time without touring income — the way most acts of their size make a living.
They'd postponed the tour twice before widespread vaccination made a return to the road seem possible in summer 2021. But the delta variant complicated those plans, and in June, Best Coast decided to try again starting Jan. 11, 2022.
As omicron ripped through the country over the holiday season, though, familiar feelings of anxiety returned. After assessing the risks (medical, financial and mental), Cosentino and Bruno announced on Jan. 6 that they were "devastated" to cancel the tour for a third time. "It was an incredibly difficult decision to make but one that we ultimately felt was right," they wrote.
