Few, if any, Richmond musicians have a legacy like that of Fun Size frontman James Menefee. As a promising young lad in a budding scene, his early ventures into music found immediate acclaim. Where the 90s-era Richmond music scene was concerned, Fun Size weren’t just any band. For many in the city, Fun Size was one of the greatest things to ever happen to Richmond music. It took the four members to places no one could have even imagined. And just when you thought they were about to venture even further, it was over. Now, more than twelve years later, Fun Size are together once more, and with better heads on their shoulders, they might be able to give it the shot that they earned long ago.
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Few, if any, Richmond musicians have a legacy like that of Fun Size frontman James Menefee. As a promising young lad in a budding scene, his early ventures into music found immediate acclaim. Where the 90s-era Richmond music scene was concerned, Fun Size weren’t just any band. For many in the city, Fun Size was one of the greatest things to ever happen to Richmond music. It took the four members to places no one could have even imagined. And just when you thought they were about to venture even further, it was over. Now, more than twelve years later, Fun Size are together once more, and with better heads on their shoulders, they might be able to give it the shot that they earned long ago.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE NEW ISSUE OF RVA MAGAZINE!
An introduction to punk rock can happen in several ways. Some have an older sibling who acts as a resource, while others learn about it from friends. The latter was the case for Menefee, and his gateway was none other than Fun Size drummer Allen Skillman. “I have known Allen since I was four,” Menefee explains. “He grew up across the street from me and had moved around a bit before finally returning back to the area. When he did, he had all of these records from bands like Screeching Weasel, Face to Face, Descendents, All, that kind of stuff. It was this So-Cal punk that I was immediately drawn to.” This was the fuel needed for Fun Size to take shape, which happened when most of the members were just twelve years old. For the most part, they were just trying to figure out how to play their instruments. “By the time we put out our first record, I was fifteen,” Menefee reminisces. “It felt like there weren’t any pop-punk bands in Richmond at the time. It helped us to try to discover how we could create our own scene, and the time period seemed instrumental to this. We were all a little more open, less jaded.”
After developing a fanbase in Richmond, Fun Size wanted to go on tour. With no real help or assistance, Menefee had to reach out for advice from someone. There was one obvious candidate that would prove to be integral. “We had decided we all wanted to go on tour, and the only person I knew that could guide me on this was Tim Barry,” Menefee recalls. “So I knocked on his door, and he showed me maps. He illustrated how to set up an itinerary, how I could set up connections in each town, make phone calls and see if my band could play. It was as if he were like, ‘Go forth, my child, and spread your pop-punk love with the universe.’”
The first tour took place the day after Menefee graduated from high school in the summer of 1996. Fun Size didn’t fare too well on their first outing. However, the mistakes and disasters were learning exercises for everyone involved, and if not for these experiences, what came next may have never occurred. They were offered the chance to tour with Discount that fall, and the low-level buzz surrounding the band helped put touring into perspective. “After that winter, we decided to tour on the weekends and spend the summers on full-fledged tours,” says Menefee. This also led to their relationship with Vinnie Fiorello of Fueled By Ramen. “I had sent Vinnie a couple demos. This is right when Fueled By Ramen started. He wanted to put out a seven-inch. We were determined to tour on this release, and it set the tide for everything thereafter.”
The release of this seven-inch and the subsequent tour in the summer of 1997 would lead to great things for Fun Size. After their first month long tour led them to Gainesville, members of Less Than Jake caught their performance, which encouraged Fiorello to approach the band about recording a full-length. “They were more or less like if you want to do a full-length, we’ll put it out,” Menefee says. “And I got really excited because we had all of these songs we had written over the course of three years, and we could finally have it all documented. Nothing would go unaccounted for and we could record everything.”
After Fueled By Ramen released this LP, entitled Glad To See You’re Not Dead, Fun Size started picking up steam. “Everything started to come a bit easier and people were taking notice,” Menefee says. “I was in college at the time and we were receiving mail from all around the country. In-between classes, I would try to respond to as much of the mail as possible. I would go to pay phones and book tours. It was a pretty monumental time for us.” Unfortunately, this kind of hyperactivity can become detrimental to a band’s mental state. Fun Size had done so much since their preteen origins. Now, at nineteen, as they were becoming adults with new responsibilities in their personal lives, they were signed to Fueled by Ramen and touring rampantly. “The record dropped in May of 1998 and we spent a summer on the road,” Menefee explains. “When we got home, we were really exhausted and burned out. What we needed was someone that may have been older, wiser, and in the industry to tell us that this was just kind of what happens. You need to straighten up and get through this hump. Every band goes through this, [but] we didn’t see it that way. We weren’t getting any new songs written and priorities were becoming skewed. Finding time to be a band was becoming more difficult. And it was annoying, because we were actually doing the best we were ever doing, and I couldn’t see that then.”
One particular incident involving a missed touring opportunity ended the band for Menefee. Fiorello made a last minute call to the band about jumping on a few dates of a tour featuring Snuff, Less Than Jake, and Discount. “Vinnie wanted us to meet them in Atlanta to join this tour,” Menefee relates. “I called everyone in the band. Everyone couldn’t do it because of work or other reasons, and the call I made back to Vinnie was the final push in ending the band. He couldn’t believe that we weren’t able to jump on board. I realized then that I needed to be in a band that could just be on the road. That was enough for me to try and figure out where Fun Size was going.”
Even as Fun Size played their last shows over the next few months, Menefee was noticing new faces in the crowd. It made him realize that although the breakup was going to have to happen, this may have not been the right time to do it. “Our last show was huge and it really bummed me out,” he says. “I did realize that this had to be done, because not everyone’s head was in the same place. That’s what I mean when [I say] I wish someone had stepped in, because it could have saved the band to have that outside perspective and push to persevere, in spite of the rough patches.” Instead, before the members had even reached their twenties, this was the end of Fun Size.
Menefee spent the next seven years with the group River City High. For better or worse, the experience left him with several lessons regarding the music industry that he would have never learned otherwise. While Fun Size’s early development proceeded at a snail’s pace, River City High was the complete opposite. When they formed, Menefee wanted to hit the ground running. In some respects, it worked out in his favor. “River City High’s whole story can be pegged towards my desire to tour constantly,” he says. “We hit the road hard for three years. Everyone around me wondered what I was doing. I wanted a deal so bad that I was willing to sacrifice everything. Then we got signed by MCA in 2002 and it was all happening. I might have not seen it the right way, but I thought Fun Size didn’t work because we didn’t work hard enough for it. So when we signed to MCA, I was convinced we had made it, and it definitely built us up.”
Unforutnately, though, the label folded soon after signing River City High. They did their best to carry on, but were never really able to recover from the letdown. A brief opportunity that arose from an appearance in an MTV contest seemed a possible savior for River City High, but at this point they were not the same band that people had become introduced to through their early releases on Doghouse Records. “There was this three year lapse where no one really got to see the evolution of the band from pop-punk to this bar rock sound,” Menefee explains. “The inspiration behind it was a push from the label that led us to believe that pop-punk was dead. We wanted to keep moving forward, and our music started to change as a result.” This gap in time confused most people, making it difficult for River City High to regain the momentum that they had started with, and eventually led to the demise of the band.
Once River City High was done, Menefee needed to take some time to himself. The dynamics of the music scene were changing locally and nationally. “I came home to Richmond and that’s when screamo started to take over,” he explains. “There were these kids with flat-ironed hair screaming for five minutes and it made no sense to me. It was also troubling to spend seven years on the road with River City High and feel like everything [in Richmond] was foreign territory. From 1995 to 1999, I was at every show. I practically lived at Twisters and Metro. At this point, I felt like a stranger to this town and its music. I didn’t understand the new bands and they didn’t know who I was. I felt like a dinosaur, and that felt terrible. It might sound whiny but it was the way I felt at the time. I was ready to move on, to maybe start doing something new.”
This change in his thought process helped inspire his songwriting in his next group, Long Arms. He needed a dynamic change musically and this was the perfect outlet. “I never stopped writing songs, but I did approach songwriting somewhat differently,” he explains. Long Arms is certainly a softer approach for Menefee. He had previously existed in the world of pop-punk and straight-up rock, but this project allowed him to harness a bit more folk into the proceedings, and see if there was a place where the two could meet. “Some people might construe Long Arms as being like ‘old man rock,’ but to me it’s just another idea and a way to express that,” he says. “If it’s honest and it comes from a solid grounding, you can’t really deny that.” Prior to our interview, the band had recently played a successful gig at The National, and this brought up the topic of Long Arms’ continuing existence. “With this two-pile thought process, these days it seems like I will write a song and it either fits for Long Arms or it fits for Fun Size. As long as that remains to be the case, I don’t see why either band can’t co-exist with the other one.”
The idea of getting Fun Size back together emerged from a gathering in support of a friend in need. Dan Duggins suffered a massive stroke in April of 2010. Without health insurance, he was accumulating bills in massive amounts. People began to set up benefits to help Duggins pay his bills, and one particular benefit promoter sent out a request to Menefee to see if Fun Size would consider reuniting. The band agreed to do it. “Getting ready for that show really put us all into the mindset of giving this another try,” Menefee says. “Enough time had passed, and I think we all felt like we could learn from mistakes of our youth.” The show was a great success, and provided the perfect means for Fun Size to envision a second life.
As the band was figuring out what their next move should be, a few differences arose. Original guitarist Orice Collins was initially on board, until a minor dispute arose regarding the direction this new Fun Size era would take. “I love Orice to death and we wanted him to be on board for this next stage of the band,” Menefee explains. “The only issue was that I felt like we were better off keeping the sound of Fun Size a more succinct idea, as opposed to engaging more variety and having a new record sound a bit off the wall. It’s not that I wanted to pigeonhole the new album and have it feel limited. I figured we are reintroducing ourselves to a new generation and we might be better off trying to create a solid foundation of what our sound is.”
After Collins’ departure, the band was without a lead guitarist. Pedro Aida, a local producer who’d recorded Long Arms’ 2010 debut LP and contributed some guitar playing as well, came up as potential candidate. Menefee threw out an offer to Aida to sit for a few practices with Fun Size, but Aida had something else in mind. “I initially went to Pedro and asked if he wanted to maybe sit in for a few shows. His instant response was that if you let me come to practice and play with you guys, I’m going to want to be a part of this. I knew how good Pedro was and it seemed like a no-brainer to have him be a part of Fun Size.” With the band’s lineup complete, it was now time to get to work on recording their new full length, Since Last We Spoke.
The new record fits in perfectly with Fun Size’s late nineties output, but feels more realized. The melodies are stronger and the instrumentation is tighter. This is the perfect spot for a group like Fun Size to pick up where they left off. Songs like “Her So Called Life” and “Difference” provide obvious examples of how far Menefee has come as a songwriter. The years spent away made the heart grow fonder, and the album is an honest testament to his unapologetic love for the pop-punk genre. One big difference between this release and their past work is guitarist Brian Owen’s presence as the lead singer on three tracks. There’s a vital contrast between Owen and Menefee’s approaches to songwriting; each of their takes is complimented by the presence of the other. Perhaps in the past, the band was perceived as Menefee’s, but when Owen brought in a few songs for preliminary practices, it wasn’t an issue at all. “Brian is one of my best friends and to have him sing lead on a few songs is obvious to me,” Menefee says. “It seems to me that it makes Fun Size seem more well-rounded.”
The first single from the album is “End of The Road,” and it is an amalgam of two distinct eras of Fun Size. There are hooks aplenty as well as a slight heaviness that is unfamiliar but doesn’t feel out of place. The video, directed by Dave O’Dell, refers sentimentally to the group’s early years. The band performs in a room with flyers for shows that Fun Size played in the 90s pasted onto every surface. The video is a reminder that you can always come back home–and sometimes home is the band that reminds you why you fell in love with music in the first place.
With a new record in the can, Fun Size’s future is wide open. It’s all just a matter of what cards they decide to play next. Menefee is optimistic as to where Fun Size is headed. “We aren’t the same kids that were barely twenty so many years ago. We all chose to pick this back up again because it seemed unfinished. There was something more that we could accomplish, and there were songs we felt like writing. I will always believe that if you let something emerge from an honest, genuine place, people will take notice. We wouldn’t try to start this up again if we weren’t all convinced that this is the place that we were all coming from. We’re all on the same page and we can’t wait to bring Fun Size back to life.”
With a past as storied as Menefee’s, it’s impressive that he has continued to pursue this dream. In light of how close he came to success, only to be turned away, one can’t help but hope that Fun Size will break through and finally achieve widespread fame for their deliberate, dynamic take on the pop-punk genre. Their legacy is a homegrown inspiration to anyone that never wants to settle for less than the best.
