Big Big Train brings 'The Woodcut & Other Stories' to Homer in March

The prog band's US run lands at the 400-seat Center for the Arts of Homer on Thursday, March 25, 2027, with tickets from $15.50 to $45.

For a certain kind of Central New York music fan, the news that landed last week is the sort you forward to three people before finishing your coffee: Big Big Train, a band that went most of its long life without touring America at all, is coming to a 400-seat room in Cortland County.

Big Big Train plays the Center for the Arts of Homer on Thursday, March 25, 2027, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15.50 to $45 through Tixr, and the date was announced Oct. 27. The ticket page bills it as part of The Woodcut & Other Stories USA Tour.

That title matters. Woodcut is the band's newest album, and when Big Big Train announced the Woodcut & Other Stories tour, The Prog Report reported that the band would play the new record in full. The first leg of that run has been a European affair this autumn, with dates across the UK and the continent. The Homer show is part of the American follow-through, and it gives Syracuse-area listeners a chance to hear the album presented the way the band built it to be heard: start to finish, in order, in a room quiet enough to catch the detail.

It is worth remembering how recently this became possible at all. Big Big Train's first US tour didn't happen until March 2024, and the band came back for a North American run in spring 2025. For years American fans knew the group mostly through records and the occasional trip abroad. Two tours in, a stop in a small upstate theater is still not something to take for granted.

Big Big Train went most of its long life without touring America at all.

The room is a big part of the appeal. With 400 seats, the Center for the Arts of Homer is a fraction of the size of the halls this music usually ends up in when a prog band crosses the Atlantic. Big Big Train's records are dense, arranged music, with long-form songs and plenty of layered parts, and a hall this size puts the audience close enough to see how it all fits together. For the people who drive in from Syracuse, Ithaca and Binghamton for this kind of booking, the trip down I-81 is the easy part.

The timing on the calendar is also tidy. The band is scheduled to sail on Cruise to the Edge out of Miami the following week, which makes the Homer date part of a short window of American shows rather than a one-off.

On tickets: the range runs from $15.50 up to $45, and in a room this small the better seats are a finite thing. If you've been waiting since 2024 to see whether the band would ever come within driving distance, this is the answer, and it's on sale now.

Mark the Thursday, plan the drive, and give the new album a few spins before March. It's the one you'll be hearing in full.

Sources: Big Big Train - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Big Big Train to play new album 'Woodcut' in full on upcoming tour - The Prog Report (progreport.com); Big Big Train Announce The Woodcut & Other Stories Tour - Rockposer (rockposer.com); Big Big Train - Fireworks Magazine (fireworks-magazine.com); Big Big Train North America Tour Diary Part One (germanderspeedwell.substack.com); Big Big Train: The Woodcut & Other Stories USA Tour - Tixr (tixr.com)