MEMA Director of External Affairs Scott Simmons
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Drew Hall:MDOT presents the Extra Mile Podcast.
Paul Katool:Welcome in to another edition of the Extra Mile podcast presented by the Mississippi Department of Transportation. I'm Paul Katool, and as always, joined by my cohost, Will Craft. Today, we've got a great guest, someone you might recognize from broadcast journalism where he worked at WAPT since 2003, but he has joined the dark side of the force, as we say, in our industry and has gone over to MEMA is Mr. Scott Simmons.
Paul Katool:And you are now the Director of External Affairs over there. So, yeah, really a dark force.
Scott Simmons:I, you know, I just I look at it as a as a wonderful opportunity.
Paul Katool:Oh, yeah.
Scott Simmons:It was wild. But I yeah. The dark side would be the way to use it if you wanna say it that way.
Scott Simmons:But yeah. No. It's it was just it was just a great opportunity. You know? And it really after being a journalist for so long, it was just it was that right time to make that move.
Paul Katool:No doubt. Yeah. So, kinda talk to us about this new role. Obviously, there are some similarities between journalism and communications. But, yeah, talk to us about what you're doing in this new role here.
Scott Simmons:Well, it was it was it was unique. It was. When Director Steve McCraney approached me, I thought about it. And I said, I've been a journalist over thirty years, and I was always the guy in the storm.
Scott Simmons:I was always the guy who stood in front of the hurricane when it comes towards the beach, the guy who covered the tornado, did the recovery stories, and it was just natural flow. And I started thinking about it. If I wanted to do something different, now would be the time to do it. And so he and I spoke for a while, and I thought, you know what? I like what they're doing over there.
Scott Simmons:And so that's how the transition happened. And for me, storm response, emergency response was second nature. We were speaking earlier before we started the broadcast about all the hurricanes and Katrina coverage and things that were just, you know, pack up your back, Scott. You're going south. So for me, a lot of this was easy to understand, easy to relate to, having covered not only the storms that happened, the preparedness aspects, but the recovery, which is so detailed and something that I've learned so much more about in my tenure now as Director of External Affairs is, good lord, there's so many layers in helping Mississippians recover working with FEMA and and getting that funding in and getting it to the people's hands who need it in the recovery.
Scott Simmons:It's been a learning experience.
Will Craft:Awesome. Can only imagine drinking from the fire hose, phrase we've you've used quite frequently, on the show for. How long now? So a couple months. Right?
Scott Simmons:Yeah. Actually, at one point, I was working for MEMA, and anchoring the newscast still on the weekends.
Will Craft:Double dipping there.
Scott Simmons:Literally, I would start April 7 in Mima, but my last newscast on WAPT was Easter Sunday. And, literally, I said, I'm putting the laptop down, guys. I've gotta start, you know, the other thing. But I was hailing double duty, you know, because I had such a long history with Hearst, which owns WAPT. It started with them when I was just a young cub reporter.
Will Craft:Yeah. We were just talking about that. Didn't realize it went that far back.
Scott Simmons:Yeah. I started in New Orleans at WDSU in 1993. And, again, there, I covered over a dozen hurricanes. And, literally I that we had a rule that I would cover hurricanes from the Texas line all the way to, say, Destin. Past Destin, we would typically not go down.
Scott Simmons:But, you know, I would be the guy standing on the beach, and, no, I would not do the Jim Cantore. Oh my god. I can't stand up. But I would be the guy on the beach. And in fact, I remember one time I was covering a hurricane.
Scott Simmons:I think it was around Orange Beach, Perdido Key, and I get a call from the station. Said, Scott, you know, where are you? You in front of a building? And I'm like, no. What do you mean?
Scott Simmons:I said, well, the guy from the CBS affiliate says you can't stand up, and he says he's in Perdido too. And I looked down the beach, and he's about 50 yards doing the, oh my god. I can't stand up. Like, I'm not gonna do that. That guy went on to CNN.
Scott Simmons:I didn't. So, you know, it's all how you look at it, but, it was it was always the thing that I always covering the storms and disasters wherever it was happening, which was always the beauty of our business is that you never know from day to day what you're gonna be covering.
Will Craft:Sure.
Scott Simmons:The diversity was always the draw in journalism to me is that, know, one day I'll be at the legislature. Next day, I'll be covering a crime.
Scott Simmons:Next day, I'll be talking about public policy for education. Even MDOT, I did a lot of stories with MDOT.
Paul Katool:For sure.
Scott Simmons:Surely, in the latter days before I left WAPT, and my argument was always that you talk about stories that are tangible that matters, roads, bridges, everybody drives over them, people care. And I would make that case for a lot of stories when we talk about bridge projects or road projects. And, certainly, we talked about increasing funding for MDOT. That was the bread and butter that I argued people can relate to. You may not care about a school board fight in Madison County, but you're gonna care about the I-20 road improvements or the m a the Highway 80 Bridge replacement there between Rankin and Hinds County.
Scott Simmons:And so I always like those kind of moving around type of aspects of the job.
Paul Katool:Definitely. And so you've been at MEMA for a few, couple months now. Is there anything that you miss about the old job? Are you just really happy to come to another -
Scott Simmons:I've enjoyed it. I mean, I've missed certainly being a journalist. I, I didn't, I wasn't a guy who hated my profession. I actually love being a journalist.
Will Craft:Sure. Sure.
Scott Simmons:You know? And so when I left, it wasn't because I didn't like my colleagues or the work I did. I really enjoyed it. I might miss a little bit of the adrenaline
Paul Katool:Right.
Scott Simmons:Of you're doing something one day, and you literally drop your bag because you're going to something that you didn't see coming. And so it would force those neurons to fire. You know? And you're always thinking about how can I communicate? How can I relate the story?
Scott Simmons:And how can I make it relatable to viewers? That was a four hour deadline. Typically, every day, you do an editorial meeting at 09:30. I was out the door before 10AM because I wanted to get going. And so, you wouldn't typically have the stories written by 2, 03:00, but then you'd be live at 5 and 6
Scott Simmons:And by that time, when you finish writing the story to when you're actually on air, there would always be another caveat, another nugget that would come in that you would have to adapt. So, the thing that I do miss about that was that that suddenness, that that excitement and adrenaline and, and madness, licensed madness, we called it
Will Craft:Yeah.
Scott Simmons:Of the business. What I've enjoyed about MEMA so much is the public service arm of it.
Will Craft:Sure.
Scott Simmons:And when you sit at a table with a bunch of people who you realize they really care about what they're doing, and they're really knuckles down, get the job done mentality over there at MEMA. It's been really exhilarating because we talk about how can we serve Mississippians. They talk about how can we get services to them and get it done. And it's not just a cliche. It's not just a line.
Scott Simmons:Even behind the closed doors, that's really conversations that take place. We were having conversations this morning talking about our our response from the March 14-15 storms and how we are still seeing after almost three weeks of these disaster recovery centers being opened, we still have five opened. We're still seeing, you know, as much as a 100 people coming in each day seeking assistance from those storms because we had to wait so long for the presidential declaration to come in. Sixty-eight days was the longest we had had to wait for such a declaration. But once we did get moving and we once we got the green light, we were on the ground, and we're setting up those disaster recovery centers, and we're still seeing people three weeks into the game still lining up, seeking for help of of things that they tried to do on their own, and now are getting some assistance in recouping some of that money.
Will Craft:Good. Yeah. I think we we saw the press release, I think, maybe last week.
Paul Katool:Yeah.
Will Craft:Kinda detailing some of that.
Scott Simmons:We're we're we're move from the press side, we're definitely moving a lot of material because we wanna tell people how much is being done, with our federal and local partners. We always talk about federally-funded, state-managed, locally-implemented.
Will Craft:Absolutely.
Scott Simmons:Which is the key to what we do. And in this right now, when we have our MEMA team working hand in hand with FEMA at these disaster recovery sites, it's all about geared towards that person, helping that survivor get back on their feet and get their lives back together.
Will Craft:No doubt about it. And you guys do an excellent job at all that. We every year, we, we try to make this an annual podcast and visit with the folks out at MEMA. Such a critical role out there, and we sort of touched on it just briefly already. But as you mentioned, hurricane season is here. We're getting into it.
Scott Simmons:It is. And we were talking about Hurricane Katrina, which for me was, obviously a very big occasion in my life, a big milestone in my career. I had been at, the NBC in New Orleans for almost eleven years. When they first approached me, Hearst, about moving to Jackson to be the main anchor, my first reaction was, wait a minute. What?
Scott Simmons:Then I started thinking about it, where I wanted to raise a family. I grew up in South Jackson. A lot of people think I'm from Louisiana because I was there there so long, but I'm actually from South Jackson. And I started thinking about where I wanted to raise my children, and it was here. That was the key reason I moved here.
Scott Simmons:Sold the house in Lakeview, New Orleans a year and three months before Katrina hit.
Will Craft:Crazy.
Scott Simmons:The house got 10 feet of water. When the storm happened, all my friends WDSU, again, the company, Hearst owns WDSU and WAPT, they evacuated to our studios. We had to put them in hotels as in Walthall when we saw open as a hotel.
Paul Katool:Oh, wow.
Scott Simmons:I remember some of them saying, know, "Scott, I'm a come stay at your house." And I'm like, "I have no electricity. You have a hot shower and lights. I'm sleeping on my back patio."
Scott Simmons:But during that era, it was so eye opening because we went on the air for six and a half days straight. No commercials, formatting, no newscast scripting. It was literally the old school rip and read. They would rip wire copy from it, hand it to me. They would say, "Scott, we've got a aerial coming in from CNN of the first shots of New Orleans," and I'd jump on the desk with Norman Robinson, my colleague from WDSU at the time.
Scott Simmons:And we started looking at those aerials, and I could say that's West End Boulevard. That's Catina Drive right there. That's, the Central Business District as we watched those first images come in. And we would start at 10:00 in the morning, say, I'll come in, and I would anchor for a couple hours at the time, then my co-anchor, Joyce Brewer, would jump on the set. I'd take a couple hours, get back on the set, and I'd go till ten or eleven at night.
Scott Simmons:Our colleagues from they jump on the anchor desk and take over. We were just wall to wall until our morning crew would get on. And so we did that for about six and a half days before we started scripting newscasts, having rundowns. And, you know, we were seeing those first images of the Superdome. You know, none of that was scripted.
Will Craft:Yeah.
Scott Simmons:We were literally seeing it as it was unfolding and those heart wrenching images. And as we look back now twenty years, it's hard to believe how far we've come. We are still working Katrina resolution projects. There's still one left in Biloxi, I believe it's a water project, that's still providing Katrina disaster funding to that municipality as they do infrastructure repair from that grant funding money. Twenty years has been a long time coming, and we always ask people as we look now towards the hurricane season, don't take it for granted.
Will Craft:Amen.
Scott Simmons:Because they they when when the National Hurricane Center predicts it's gonna be an active season or it's gonna be a less than active season, I'd just tune it out because it only takes one storm. You say it's gonna be a less than active season, but you get one hurricane that hits your shore, and it could wreck your world forever.
Will Craft:Absolutely.
Scott Simmons:Which brings us back to Katrina. Remember, that split the state. It went straight up the state. If you think only hurricanes matter to those on the coast and I don't know if you guys remember. You guys were younger.
Scott Simmons:I'm sure. Mhmm. But, you know, here in Jackson, there's no power.
Will Craft:Right.
Scott Simmons:Right. No gasoline. And it was way for much of the center or part of the state, it laid a wasteland in its path. And and we spent so much time covering in the wake of the storms. You know, the go zone money, the federal money that was available to help people recover because there was so much damage from the coast to the Central North parts of the state.
Scott Simmons:We turn our eyes now towards this hurricane season, and we tell people to be prepared and start thinking about what you can do. We like to say the first three days are on you. The first seventy-two are on you. Think about it. Do you have seventy-two hours worth of water?
Will Craft:Right. Yeah.
Scott Simmons:If you're dealt with a Jackson water crisis, you
Will Craft:Sure.
Scott Simmons:You don't appreciate water until you don't have it. Have you got seventy two hours of water? Have you got canned goods that could get you through in a pinch?
Scott Simmons:What would you do if you lost power for a week? Think about your propane grill.
Will Craft:Yeah.
Scott Simmons:Think about your charcoal, thing like that. You could make it work if you have a plan, but if you don't, then you're gonna have a hard time.
Will Craft:That's right. I I will not say that I am the best prepper at all in in, you know, any stretch of the imagination, but one of my favorite quotes of all time was the old Abe Lincoln, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. You know? That's one of those situations when the worst of the worst scenario is is at your door.
Will Craft:You better have some type of plan in place.
Scott Simmons:And we ask people to start only thinking about food and water, but where would you go? Where would your loved ones you got friends on the coast? Those people that have moved down to the coast in the twenty years since may not have a firm grasp of what a hurricane can do. They may have some naive,
Will Craft:That's a good point.
Scott Simmons:for lack of a better description, idea of what it's like to be on the coast.
Scott Simmons:Reach out to them. Make sure they know they have a place to go. Because remember, when we have storm evacuations, you have what? Contraflow.
Will Craft:That's right.
Paul Katool:Right.
Scott Simmons:Which MDOT knows all about.
Paul Katool:Definitely.
Scott Simmons:And and that is such an important counterflow plan. You're gonna have all these people coming up. Hattiesburg is gonna become such a huge
Will Craft:Oh, yeah.
Scott Simmons:mecca because those people, a lot times, think that they can evacuate to just an hour off the coast.
Scott Simmons:Well, they'll need to come further north. So when you think about your hurricane preparedness plans, think about what are your friends and family gonna do. Do they know where they can go? Do you know where you would go if your home did get hit by a tornado that could pop out of a hurricane, drop on your home? Where would you go?
Scott Simmons:Where would your loved ones meet if your home got demolished and you had to have a meeting place? Have that street corner lined up, that uncle's house where you know you can meet, and that contact list. It's so important.
Will Craft:You know, I could actually, you say that. I haven't thought about that in a long time, but I, I think what was it? The Muster Station things you did in high school, you know, if if the scenario, you knew where to go.
Paul Katool:Yeah.
Will Craft:It was just at least that far. Right?
Scott Simmons:And it's important that you start thinking about it now because, again, we're just starting the hurricane season. Historically, we've always seen that the hurricanes get busier towards late July, August, September. But, really, that July to August window is when we see the most activity in our area when the Gulf is waters are warmer. As you remember, we start watching these these systems move. It's when they hit that tip of Florida and hit the warm waters of The Gulf, that's when they build their strength.
Scott Simmons:That's when they become so impactful. And so start thinking about that now, getting your plan together, and thinking about what your loved ones will do in the event that something happens your way.
Paul Katool:Absolutely. No doubt. And That's a lot of really good information. Scott, do you have I know you guys do at MEMA, like a hub for resources, a website we can go to, or social media?
Scott Simmons:We have multiple platforms, which we are proud of. Certainly, our award winning MEMA app, which has everything right there at the tip of your fingers. It's the MEMA app, the msema,uh,org.org, our website, which has just an abundance of information and links to people like like mdot. You know, we have all these connections, and we're so proud of what we're trying to do through our MEMA app and our MEMA website and our social media platforms as you and I know on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nextdoor. We're Twitter, our x now, we call it.
Scott Simmons:We're hitting all of these platforms at the same time because we know that so many people get their information so many different ways. That's right. And so, yeah, we're hitting them all there.
Paul Katool:Absolutely. Yeah. So if you're in those lower six coastal counties especially, please go check out resources that MEMA has. They're they're great resources. And we we really work hand in hand with MEMA and have our own resources as well, so wanted to give that a shout out real quick.
Paul Katool:For evacuation routes, our hurricane evacuation guide, visit gom..com/hurricanes. You download that for free. There's also a hurricane, preparedness checklist there. So please, between MEMA and MDOT, we've got you covered. But like Scott was saying, please do it now.
Scott Simmons:And get familiar with it. Your your websites, your MDOT platforms have access to those traffic cameras that you can access on a map. It really is invaluable when you're trying to you got a family coming up safe from Ocean Springs. What does I I 10 look like or 55? Well, you can go click on m dot camera, pull up that shot, get a feel for what they're dealing with, and you can be a valuable resource for that loved one who's evacuating north.
Scott Simmons:Hey. This is what 49 looks like right now because you can look at that camera.
Paul Katool:Exactly. Hey. We've got you covered for sure. Yeah. Well, there's lots lots about lots of good information on hurricanes just now.
Paul Katool:Anything else kind of that's going on at MEMA right now that you'd like to shout out?
Scott Simmons:Right now, we're just we're really hyper focused on the disaster recovery from the March storms. And we have again, we're seeing as many as a 100 people come in. I think it was yesterday in Jeff Davis County, to one of our disaster recovery centers. We're reaching out to people because there are resources that are available and assistance that's available for those who may have gotten a hit, finally gave up, waiting, and just tried to move on. There's opportunities for them, and we have links to all that in our websites, on our platforms.
Scott Simmons:If they need any information, they can certainly call us. And we just ask people that if you know a loved one who may have taken a hit but didn't bother to go through the process, step up now because the money is available for you. If you qualify, it could really help you cover some of the expense that you might have spent recovering and dealing with that storm.
Paul Katool:There you go. Absolutely. Very good information information there. There. And we've got some fun questions, did wanna circle back a little bit to back to the news real quick.
Paul Katool:So, I mean, you are a veteran. You you covered a lot of different things. So can you give us some of, like, the the craziest, most interesting, or most memorable stories that
Scott Simmons:you covered mercy. Over the years? Oh gosh. Covering David Duke, as a reporter in Louisiana when he the the Klan leader Right. Got elected to the state house.
Scott Simmons:And, you know, I just moved from Ole Miss, not long removed from Ole Miss, coming down there, and they would try to tease me. And I would respond back. Yeah. Don't give me a crud. Our nobody elected our clan leader to a state house seat.
Scott Simmons:But I covered, David Duke during his run for US senate and for governor and, you know, reporters that were wearing bulletproof vests because they were afraid somebody was gonna take a shot at him and miss and hit one of the reporters. You know, I covered Evan Edwards, if you remember the governor, Edwin Edwards, Louisiana, who actually ran against Duke for governor and won. And, you know, the joking the bumper stickers at the time of that campaign was vote for the crooked matters because he was running against David Duke. So you imagine what it was like covering this almost atmosphere of a guy who was flamboyant and controversial, David Duke. Then there's Edwin Edwards with a personality and a controversial background of his own.
Scott Simmons:So I was literally every day covering all of those. And then the federal indictments, of Edwin Edwards, a corruption investigation. I covered that from the first search warrant to the third trial. I covered the mafia's infiltration of the state's video poker industry. Oh, wow.
Scott Simmons:If you wanna hear that story, I could tell you a fun one. Literally, Genovese and Gambino crime families had set up straw men to get video poker river licenses at truck stops. They were filtering that money to the crime families. So some of the defendants were pleading guilty one day. And right when they had sentenced these guys, the your sentence is this, I started to walk out of courtroom to let the photographers know downstairs, hey.
Scott Simmons:They're getting ready to walk out. One of the defendants, Jojo Carazzo, starts walking for the door. This guy's, like, five foot three. Right? And I'm like, he he gets in front of me in the elevator.
Scott Simmons:He's, like, up to my chest. And I'm like, what are you doing, little man? So we start walking towards the after we get down, we start walking the door, he starts doing the fast walk. And I'm like, dude, yeah. Really?
Scott Simmons:So I just take start jogging. He thinks he's gonna jog with me, and I smoke him to the door, push the door up, told my colleague I've talked to her buddy, Tom Fisher. Tom, get him. Tom grabs his camera. And the video is hysterical because this little guy's trying to run down the sidewalk, and all of a sudden, Tom throws me the mic.
Scott Simmons:And all of sudden, we're running backwards. And finally, he just looks at it. I'm not gonna run these guys. And he puts his face in the camera. I'm like, what are you gonna do, little man?
Scott Simmons:We go back to the front of the courthouse to do the interviews with his attorney. Goes, yeah. Not many people would have chased Jojo Carrazzo down the sidewalk. He was John Gotti's driver. And we were like, maybe I should have rethought that one.
Scott Simmons:You know?
Will Craft:So Just sent him a gift basket for sure.
Scott Simmons:Yeah. Go ahead, miss Carrazzo. Have a
Will Craft:nice day.
Scott Simmons:You know, the exciting times, in New Orleans. And in this this career that I had that I covered so much, and just seen so many things, and those are some of the fun highlights. Absolutely.
Paul Katool:That's pretty good.
Will Craft:Yeah. I can't beat that.
Paul Katool:The craziness is stay is in Louisiana, and
Scott Simmons:that's where
Paul Katool:I know there's some here, but
Scott Simmons:There's been some good stuff, but, unfortunately, not quite as as that. But
Will Craft:We'll take that.
Scott Simmons:Think about all the governor's elections and and the races that I've covered going back to when Hailey Barber had just got elected. And Sure. You know, we we circle back towards Katrina, and I was doing live shots for all these, you know, networks, MSNBC or CNN. And people were asking at the time, you know, why is Mississippi getting all this federal assistance when Louisiana has so much damage? And, you know, my response was, well, we elected the most powerful lobbyist in Washington to be our governor.
Scott Simmons:Yep. And, you know, Thad Cochran is the, senate appropriations chairman. That's how we're rolling in. That that money that flowed helped Mississippi rebuild and recover. Okay.
Scott Simmons:And it was just an amazing time as we covered all of that because people talk about the storm. They they remember the flooding that happened in New Orleans, but remind them where the hurricane hit Mhmm. And the damage that did here in Mississippi. You know, the the problems in New Orleans were caused by the failure of the levees largely Mhmm. That gave way.
Scott Simmons:But we were the one that took the the big hit, and our coast was wiped from the from from the sand to 90, you know, wiped out. So
Will Craft:It's an image I'm I'm certain at this point everyone has seen. But just that casino sitting, you know, on land, total that was just still just boggles my mind. You know?
Scott Simmons:It it is. And and it being a child of the coast, I mean, vacationed down there. I was as a kid, I always went down for a week with my family. It's what we did. And so I could always say that I went to Barasev's restaurant on the coast to eat.
Scott Simmons:I can still remember what the restaurant smelled like. Gone. You know? After after the wake of Katrina when the Riverboat casinos came in and changed the complexion of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and then when you saw the hurricanes did to those casinos and changed everything. And still to this day, when we go down to do our as a reporter and now through MEMA that we see still there's so many vacant lots that have not moved or done anything because of the cost of insurance.
Scott Simmons:And Yeah. It's just, it's something that we'll continue to talk about for decades, I feel.
Will Craft:There's no doubt. No doubt. Absolutely. The climb and the comeback has been great, though. Yes.
Will Craft:Absolutely. Yep. Paul, we we can, we can ease up on this on the heavy questions Yeah. Man now and just give him two softballs here at the very end. Okay.
Will Craft:These are the, the fun questions we do like to wrap up the episodes with. We, obviously love to eat. We like to get out on the road and go around and see what's out there. We've got a lot of good suggestions thus far. So I know you spent a lot of time traveling the roads and eating to places.
Will Craft:Maybe a a favorite hole in the wall somewhere you don't get to go very often.
Scott Simmons:Hole in the wall. Gosh. I don't know if you call roosters a hole in the wall. I've always been a fond of roosters, and I don't know about calling a hole in the wall, but I always loved it. I get I'm a simpleton.
Scott Simmons:They have a hamburger steak there.
Will Craft:Oh, yeah.
Scott Simmons:They just ground black Angus beef. Yep. And I love that joint. You know, I'm a big barbecue fan, of course. Pig and pint's a good spot.
Will Craft:Yes. Oh, yeah.
Scott Simmons:The fine dining, I love Table 100. It's hard for me not to make an argument for them, because I love the shrimp and grits there. Yep. That's my fancy spot. So
Will Craft:The wife had that last week. That was our our monthly date night, Table 100. So shout out
Scott Simmons:right there. Lose for that. Great.
Paul Katool:Well, those are some spots right there. The pig and pine, that's a that's a personal favorite of mine. Good stuff. They do it right for sure. So besides, food, we're also big music fans in public affairs.
Paul Katool:I know you work with Mikey Flood, world's biggest biggest fish fan. Right. We love we love it all. Classic rock, you know, that runs the gamut. But is there a concert that, sticks out over the years that you attended in
Scott Simmons:I've been going to more country music concerts lately, and and in part because the Brandon Amphitheater has provided that opportunity. I saw I saw Hank Williams junior. Oh, yeah. Love it. Had to see Hank Williams junior
Will Craft:At least once.
Scott Simmons:Because I'll go back. When I was a student at Ole Miss, I had won tickets to the concert. My friends from Mississippi State came over to go to concert with me, and we had too much drink and never made it to the show. So when Hank came a couple weeks back, I'm like, oh, I gotta make it this time. It's if for nostalgia reasons only.
Scott Simmons:You know? That's great. I was talking about Garth Brooks. We got to go my wife is a huge Garth Brooks fan. She's seen him 16 times.
Scott Simmons:I've seen him twice. But we were in Baton Rouge for the great earthquake concert. We did calling Baton Rouge in Tiger Stadium, and the the it was so loud that the seismic equipment at LSU recorded vibrations from the concert. You know, I've seen some good ones. Pink Floyd, I saw New Orleans at Superdome.
Will Craft:Oh, man.
Scott Simmons:Which at the time, you know, I'm sitting almost ground level just up off the floor towards the back. And I thought, well, I'm a little far from the stage. But if you know Floyd with the visuals Sure. And I was like, this is the best seat in the house. You know?
Scott Simmons:And it was just really great to see that. So, yeah. You know, college, I was a more of a REM fan. Okay. 10,000 maniacs, I've seen them probably more than anybody.
Scott Simmons:But just I kind of evolved. You know? Whether it be Brian Adams as survivor when they played here at the Coliseum back in the eighties. That was wild. You know, just bounced around.
Scott Simmons:I I like to say that I I just go with the wind when it comes to music. And lately, just a lot of country music, but, you know, Luke Bryan was a great concert. I enjoyed him. So, yeah, I bounce around, man.
Paul Katool:I love that. Yeah. That's good stuff. We love country music as well here, so awesome stuff. Scott, thank you so much for coming in and joining us.
Paul Katool:Hey. You did a lot of good work in broadcast journalism, and now you're helping out Mississippians in a different way. So thank you so much.
Scott Simmons:Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Paul Katool:Absolutely. We'll go ahead and wrap things up. Thank you to our listeners, our viewers for tuning in into the Extra Mile podcast. You can watch and listen to episodes by visiting gom..com forward slash the extramile. Follow us on social media at Mississippi DOT is the handle.
Paul Katool:Follow Mima as well. And, we'd like to thank our, producer editor Drew Hall for holding things down behind the scenes. Remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways.