There are people you meet in your life who exist within the normal rules of time, employment, and identification. You know their last name. You know where they work. You know which bar they’ll be haunting on a Friday night.
Agent K was never one of those people.
He didn’t arrive so much as materialize.
I met him a long time ago — let’s call it twenty-five years — back when Madison bars were still fogged with cigarette smoke and the floor stuck to your shoes like it was trying to keep you from escaping your own decisions. Memory finally stopped lying to me. It was Luther’s Blues or maybe the French Quarter Café. Both are gone now, scraped off the map like embarrassing tattoos, which feels appropriate.
He was already there when I walked in.
Leather suede jacket with long fringes brushing the barstool like loose wiring. Fedora pulled low, a single feather tucked into the band for reasons never explained. Mirrored sunglasses indoors, at night, during a blues set — a move that should have been ridiculous, but somehow wasn’t. He drank beer and listened to the band like they were confessing something important.
We didn’t talk much at first. We listened. That was the rule.
Later, the talking started. And somehow, without contracts, paperwork, or even a clear mutual understanding, we became friends.
Which is unsettling, because despite the fact that he would follow me back to my apartment after closing time, despite the fact that he would sit on my couch smoking some exceptionally good fucking dope and laying out music that made my record shelves feel provincial and ashamed, I still have no idea who the hell this guy was.
He had a beautiful sense of music and zero respect for borders. Jazz, blues, psych — things that shouldn’t have worked together but absolutely did. He had a feral white cat named Booger who looked like it had survived a fire, a flood, and at least one failed spiritual awakening.
And Stephanie.
I should clarify this now before rumors get out of hand.
Stephanie was not a person.
Stephanie was a three-foot-tall bong.
Hand-blown. Heavy. Elegant in a way that suggested both craftsmanship and poor life choices. Agent K knew Stephanie far too well. In fact, she lived with him for a while. Long enough that you stopped asking questions and simply accepted that when Agent K showed up, Stephanie was never far behind.
She sat in the corner like furniture. She had presence. Authority. You didn’t move her unless you were asked.
Agent K treated her with respect.
And the stories.
Christ almighty, the stories.
He talked about record stores the way other people talk about holy sites. Claimed he’d explored every little shop between Madison and the left armpit of Nebraska — basements, barns, back rooms, places where the owner didn’t even remember what was in the boxes anymore. He said he’d seen bands I’d only read about — the Pixies before inevitability set in, the Ramones when they were still dangerous — shows so loud and cramped the room itself seemed afraid.
After the bars closed, we’d sit listening to jazz while he told me about places that didn’t sound real. Hunting buffalo in Botswana. Learning sitar while sitting cross-legged in the dirt, smoking hookah under a sky so full of stars it made Wisconsin feel like a clerical error. He talked about music like it was contraband — something you smuggle across borders and hand off quietly to the right people.
Right before he’d leave — and he always left suddenly — he’d drop a CD on the table.
No explanation.
No context.
Just, “You should really play this on Rolling with Scissors.”
And I did. Every time.
Then he vanished.
For years.
Every now and then, something would surface. A disc. A note. Later, a playlist. No return address. No fingerprints. Just music that felt like it had survived something on the way here.
And now, somehow, the transmissions have started again.
Set lists. Notes. Music that doesn’t belong to any one decade but absolutely belongs on this show.
As we head into 2026, Rolling with Scissors is committing fully to deep dives — real, start-to-finish explorations of artists who matter. No highlights. No shortcuts. Late-night radio that assumes the listener has patience and curiosity.
But even the deepest dives need moments where the lights flicker and the floor tilts.
That’s where Agent K comes in.
His monthly episodes will function as controlled hallucinations — palate cleansers dropped into the schedule like unmarked packages. And no, there probably won’t be intros. Not because we forgot. Not because we’re lazy. But because stopping the music to explain it would defeat the purpose.
The tracks will simply appear. One after another. No warning. No commentary. Like evidence being laid out on a table.
Rest assured, however — the paperwork exists.
Agent K always sends a playlist. Meticulously detailed. Typed like it’s meant for a filing cabinet somewhere deep in a concrete building with no windows. The artists are logged. The titles are accounted for. The proper authorities are notified so everyone gets their due and nobody kicks down the door looking for answers.
The music remains free.
The documentation is airtight.
Starting February 17th, Agent K will be taking over the airwaves once a month. He’s joining the Rolling with Scissors family — or rejoining it, because I’m not convinced he ever really left. His sets won’t be predictable. They won’t be polite. They won’t sound like something an algorithm would ever suggest.
They will sound like someone who’s been everywhere, heard everything, and still knows how to surprise you.
There will be a formal bio on the website if you need something stable to grab onto. But I wouldn’t trust it too much. Some people are better understood through the music they leave behind — and the glass they refuse to part with.
So consider this your notice.
No intros.
No explanations.
Just transmission.
Welcome back to Rolling with Scissors, Agent K.
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I remember you talking abut the this Agent K, but we determined that was a hallucination, remember? Are you back on the shrooms? And… I don’t wanna be rude, but… got any more?