‘The Ones You Remember Are The Ones That Are A Little Bit Freakier’: High Road Touring’s Wilson Zheng On Mitski’s Unusual Venue Choices (Including A High School Auditorium) 

In many ways, singer-songwriter Mitski’s 2026 tour routing seems fairly standard — at least overseas. She’s largely in theaters and large clubs in Europe, including a prestige play at Royal Albert Hall. In East Asia, there’s some arena plays.

Stateside, the conventional wisdom would be that she’d be doing something similar. After all, her last U.S. run in 2024 included a mix of amphitheaters and arenas, capped with a $1.6 million gross on 16,000 tickets at the Hollywood Bowl, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports. It stands to reason she’d be able to level up into a full arena run.

“Coming off that last tour in 2024, which was really really successful, we sold out most if not pretty much all of our shows, and I think traditional logic was to go into arenas, but I think there’s a time and place for that,” Mitski’s agent, Wilson Zheng at High Road Touring, says. “What makes my job really easy is that Mitski knows what she wants to do. For us, once we learn and we talked about some of the options of exactly what she wants to execute, our whole team gets together and starts hashing that out. We want to serve the artist the way that she wants to execute, how she wants to present her art. It’s not always about the most money or the biggest amount of people you can get in. There’s different ways to do that and a key part of not just an artist’s development but an artist’s longevity is you want to keep people on their toes a little bit.”

So in that spirit, instead of the 30-date arena run one might expect, she’ll do multiples in just two cities in the U.S. — New York and Los Angeles; six and five shows, respectively — and they’ll be in some off-the-wall places. In the Big Apple: The Shed, the seven-year-old ultra-modern exhibition space, art gallery and performing arts center in the Bloomberg Building at Hudson Yards. And in LA? In the auditorium of Hollywood High School, the venerable century-plus-old school best known for its glittering collection of alumni, its history as a filming location and for its 16 stairs that are a mecca for skateboarders.

“These conversations started probably around a year ago and the idea was to find venues that would bring in a little bit more of the DIY Spirit of where Mitski came from 10 years ago living in Brooklyn and finding something unique that wasn’t too big so it could an intimate experience for the fans and that’s where we landed with this initial run of shows in New York and LA,” Mitski’s agent, High Road Touring’s Wilson Zheng, says.

It’s unusual but not unheard of that Hollywood High host concerts — even beyond the expected twice-annual school band performances. Morrissey played there in 2013, filming his documentary and concert film “Morrissey: 25 Live.” According to Pollstar Boxoffice records, Ian McKaye performed there in 2008. Elvis Costello recorded a live album there in 1978. In the ’80s and ’90s, touring acts would occasionally stop by.

Still, there are challenges with playing such an off-the-wall spot. For example: who’s the talent buyer? Do you just call the principal?

“That’s how it starts. We had a couple of Goldenvoice and AEG folks go down to Hollywood High and approach the principal with this idea and got him on board and then everything runs through the LA Unified School District,” Zheng says.

The run — March 30 through April 4 — coincides with LAUSD’s spring break, which ameliorates some of the challenges

But still, there are timing limits — “the school cannot be open at 3 a.m. to load out all our gear,” Zheng says — and other limitations a team doesn’t have to face at a plug-and-play venue that hosts 180 or 200 shows a year. There’s security considerations, for example, and at Hollywood High, the seats in the auditorium weren’t numbered.

“Goldenvoice ticketing had to go in and label all the seats and then some of the ticketing folks had to put their butts down in every seat and just see what’s my vantage point, if the rig gets hung, is there gonna be a limited view?” Zheng says.

Mitski is giving back in other ways, as well. Contributions are being made. The principal/talent buyer has tickets to distribute as incentives to students. The team is tuning up the school’s 102-year-old organ.

Across the country, The Shed doesn’t have the same sort of challenges, but Zheng says the team wants to make sure the notoriously early-arriving Mitski fans — eager to get up front in the GA area — are taken care of given the mercurial nature of New York’s weather in early March.

“We have to get our message right because the last thing we want is too many people stuck outside but thankfully just in that general area there’s a huge shopping mall, there’s a lot of food, there’s bathrooms,” he says. “It’s been a huge beast but The Shed are great partners and a lot of us are learning a lot of stuff for the first time, which is great because hopefully this will set the blueprint for more shows to happen at this venue.”

One way to keep waiting crowds entertained — both before the shows and in the days around them — will be The Tansy House Exhibit, an immersive experience based on the world of the album Nothing Here Is About Me. It’ll be set up in one of The Shed’s galleries from Feb. 27 to Mar. 1, ahead of the Mar. 2-9 run. And at Hollywood High? In the cafeteria (of course).

Residencies, mini-residencies and just basic multi-night runs are becoming more frequent across the industry, a trend Zheng says seems likely to continue. He says finding new and different places to host them, as Mitski is doing, is the next evolution in that trend.

“It’s easier for the band too and we’re starting to see more and more of that across the world of artists that are doing residencies. And we’re not even talking just about Harry Styles playing 40 Madison Square Gardens. There is an element of you’re done and you’ve got a couple more but you don’t have to drive four hours or go somewhere else,” he says. “If the artists and the crew and the band are well rested the show is probably going to be smoother and they execute what they’re great at better. … We kept it nice and simple for America and obviously there’s a lot of markets that are very underserved when we do a routing like this but at the same time the people that are able to get to these shows are going to have an absolutely magnificent time.”

Zheng recalls attending shows that had an element of the weird — seeing Beach House at a black box venue in San Francisco where everyone was asked to bring a pillow to sit on, for example — and he says there’s magic in those types of events.

“We all go to big events, we all go to big shows and festivals and we go see large artists at big concerts and those are all great,” he says, “but the ones that you remember are the ones that are a little bit freakier.”

After a heavily choreographed “almost like theater” types of concerts on that 2024 tour, Zheng said this year’s Mitski performances — stripped of the trappings of the arena and the big room — are going to feel a little different.

“This is ‘let’s pick up an instrument let’s go play these songs,'” he says. “It’s one of the funnest things I’ve been able to work on because a lot of times you just book club shows, you book theaters and it’s all exciting in different ways but to take on a new challenge and see it actually come to life and see the tickets actually sell? There’s a sigh of relief, but also ‘wow, we’re really doing it.'”