Our friend, Greg Spawton, posted this two hours ago on the Big Big Train Facebook page:

We’ve been reading the comments about the shows. One of the things we like about this forum is that people feel free to say what they think, whether it be positive or negative about BBT, without fear of us getting offended. We know some of the decisions we take won’t suit everybody, but we do read and take things onboard. The first thing to say is that BBT is a band and also a small business enterprise. Like it or not, we can’t make music without taking care of the business side of things, making sure we pay our taxes, pay money to these we employ and try not fall into debt. Over the last few years, our album sales have reached a level where the turnover allows us to make more ambitious music and to do some of the things we would like to do. One of these things is to spend more time together as a band and to play some shows. Now the problem is, we have a complicated live line-up. There are 13 musicians. There will be a crew of about 7 people. We need to rehearse together in a suitable place, feed people, pay transport costs, hotels, venue hire etc. It is a very expensive proposition. We’ve thought very carefully about where to play and the size of venues. To keep costs down, we do not have management or tour promoters. Therefore, we need to keep things simple for us by playing in one place. We can’t book places that are very big as they become too expensive to hire, exposing us to financial risk if we don’t sell enough tickets, so we’ve settled on two nights at a 400 seat venue. The venue is the right sort of place for BBT music and has excellent transport links. We know playing only in London isn’t ideal, but the band is based in the south of England and London has the best transport links for people who may be coming a very long way. If the gigs go well, then in future years we may play elsewhere. I am from Birmingham and David is from Nottingham, so somewhere in the Midlands would suit us just fine. Some have commented that there won’t be enough tickets to meet demand. However, I think we will do very well to sell both nights out. The ticket price is an issue. We want it to be affordable, but we think we have to charge about £35 to make this financially viable. That is more than we want to charge but we cannot ignore financial realities. At this price, the shows will run at an acceptable loss which we hope to recover through the additional publicity, perhaps live recordings etc. We are going to do all we can to give people on this forum a headstart. We will be talking to the ticket office to ask for a pre-sale which we will mention on here and only on here. This will give forum members a 24 hour start. We suggest that people try to buy tickets for one night only on that pre-sale. However, we cannot police that and just have to trust people to use their judgement. Once the pre-sale is done and tickets go on general sale, then if anybody wants to buy tickets for both nights that will be up to them. We will probably make a formal announcement of the dates tomorrow and will keep the forum updated on the ticket situation. There may be comments, questions, grumbles and I will pin this post for a few days so they can be aired.–Greg Spawton