Elliott Yamin featured in this Months Richmond Magazine

Elliott Yamin Featured in this months Richmond magazine.

Look!  Elliott is on the cover of this month’s Richmond magazine.  And there’s an article inside too.  I’m hoping to get my very own copy in a few days…

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In the meantime, the www.richmond.com has posted a few tidbits.  Here, the editor describes the interview:

“A week earlier, here on the East Coast, reporter Joan Tupponce landed a three-hour, face-to-face interview with Elliott in the sunny courtyard outside his mom’s HealthSouth rehab room, where she was recovering from hip surgery. He sat down with Joan, donned his shades and patiently answered 80 questions. Finally, it was Joan, not Elliott, who stood up and ended the interview with: “I think you’ve had enough!”

How the shoot came together here:

“After dozens of phone calls, plenty of e-mails, and weeks of negotiating back and forth with American Idol’s publicists, it all came down to this: Elliott Yamin wouldn’t be suiting up for our cover.

…Problem was, even after getting Yamin’s sizes from Idol stylist Miles Siggins, the jackets we’d selected weren’t fitting him well, and beyond that, Yamin explained, he just wasn’t all that into wearing suits. 

Happily, the 60-second crisis was averted when Yamin offered to pop over to the place he was staying and grab some of his own clothes for the shoot. “

thanks MrsTrep and thank you Schmandy for the awesome scans

More tidbits:

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  • On singing the national anthem at the NBA Finals in Dallas, “When I first came to the arena, within the first 15 minutes I did my sound check, ” Yamin said, noting that he started to feel a tad nervous at that point. “My leg was shaking … like crazy. And there was nobody in the stands, but I knew how big it was going to be, how electric it was going to be. That’s a great atmosphere at that arena. Dallas has some of the most loyal fans, and they all get really crazy. I was just thinking in my head how big it was going to be when I actually did it, and so my leg was shaking. That subsided during the real thing, which was important.”  This was Yamin’s third time doing the anthem, and other than a few run-throughs in the green room beforehand, he said, “Each time I’ve just gone out there and freestyled it.”

  • On Idol producers’ request for confidentiality between the end of auditions and the start of the show, “It was funny, they’d send us pertinent information via e-mail about our itineraries, our flight itineraries, when we were supposed to report back and what we were supposed to bring with us and so forth, ” Yamin recalled. “There were a few people, including me, who forwarded an e-mail or two on to friends. And [Idol representatives] were actually keeping close tabs on it. So they sent out this big e-mail like, ‘All these e-mails are strictly confidential. They’re only meant for the person they’re sent to.’  “I think one of the people in the office sent out an e-mail to all of us containing everybody else’s e-mail addresses on it. So other contestants were [using that and] e-mailing other contestants of their own accord. So that caused a big stink.”

So that’s how I got all those spoilers!  Heh.  These are just excerpts.  Follow the links for more.

Here is a Richmond Times-Dispatch article on the gospel-rapper Terry Thompson aka Big Planz.  Elliott did some backing vocals on his CD:

“A producer, a songwriter and, under the alias Big Planz, a rapper, Thompson met Yamin about seven years ago through Bryan Rock, a mutual friend who worked at WCDX (“Power” 92.1-FM) at the same time Yamin handled an overnight stint at the station.

Thompson was working on a project at Richmond’s Kick Em To The Curb studios when Rock brought the fledgling singer by for a visit.

‘Elliott was just in there, hanging out. I think, truthfully, he heard the music playing and started singing at the top of his lungs, ‘ Thompson says with a hearty laugh.

In 2003, Thompson started work on a compilation CD to showcase some of the talent he discovered through his Soul Lover’s Entertainment production company. When most of the artists didn’t show up for the recording sessions, Thompson turned the project into a gospel-rap CD as Big Planz. Yamin happened to be around to lend his vocals to a trio of tracks.”

The CD is available at both Amazon.com and CDBaby.com.