New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town. The Apollo’s up but the Bowery’s down. It’s also one of the toughest and most competitive music scenes to break into, especially as a young band. But that hasn’t stopped Matthew Quirk from making a name for himself.
Quirk is a New York City-based singer-songwriter and guitarist who is the frontman of Cabin Fever, a four-piece rock band that has taken the Big Apple and the East Coast by storm with their energetic sound and consistent gig schedule, including frequent shows in Connecticut.
Quirk grew up in a musical family, as his older brother Anthony is a drummer in the Nashville music scene. Inspired by him, Quirk started playing drums in the fourth grade, having his brother show him the ropes. But he dropped it quickly, saying that “it’s not fun when your brother tells you what to do.” A year later, he picked up guitar thanks to his school’s new music teacher who would use a guitar in class instead of a piano.
Growing up, Quirk continued to play guitar when he wasn’t doing musical theater and acting. He also began dabbling with songwriting in middle school, though he called these early attempts “very few and far between.” It was a busy lifestyle, noting that “I didn’t have the time do anything else except acting, school and trying to live a somewhat normal life.”
But his life was changed forever when the pandemic hit in March 2020. With the world shut down and no stages to perform on, he had more time than he knew what to do with. And to fill that void, he started writing songs more consistently.
“It was kind of the first time in my life where I had free time to do almost whatever I wanted,” he said. “So, I started picking up the guitar from there, writing and taking it more seriously.”
He soon established a standard for himself where he vowed to write three songs every night. Quirk did this for over a year to help sharpen his writing chops and push him more. This was a demanding and challenging regiment that took its toll, as he recalled many nights where he would be struggling to find that third idea.
“I think then I didn’t really believe in myself, so if I didn’t come up with a good enough song that night, I would almost break down and get really stressed,” he said. “And it was just a really dark spot, which it shouldn’t have been because I was writing three songs a night.”
Quirk cited Ed Sheeran as one of his biggest inspirations for taking on this challenge, explaining that seeing Sheeran’s extensive writing credits on songs by other artists fueled his drive to write as much as possible.
“Everybody knows a lot of Ed Sheeran songs, but if you look at him, for a while he was writing every hit song out there, you just didn’t realize it was written by him,” he said. “So, I was like ‘well that’s what I gotta do,’ and I just kept going and going.”
Now, Quirk still tries to write one song every night. He said that as he’s written more, his lyrics have evolved, moving from more teenage angst-style material to broader and more introspective reflections of life. One of the songs that shows this best is his song “Changes,” which he wrote about a friend of his who committed suicide, noting that “I don’t think I could have written that at 16.”
As he continued to develop as a songwriter, the seeds of a new project were planted during his senior year of high school when his friend Alex LoPinto, a guitarist, invited him to a jam session. The jam featured seven people, including two guitarists and two saxophonists. These sessions continued and a core soon formed of Quirk, LoPinto and bassist Luke Uppenbrink. Bonded by their music, they founded Cabin Fever and have been together ever since. For Quirk, this was the first time being involved in a serious band, as he had previously been in a band earlier in high school that only played at a school talent show.
Quirk and the band got right to work, releasing their first single “M.I.A.” in March 2022 and the extended play “All For Nothing” in 2023. It was Quirk’s first experience working in a recording studio and while he would do things differently now, he said “we were just so unbelievably excited to be in a studio recording our own music.”
He credits the band’s growth in the studio to their producer Ethan Gueldenzopf. “We had a producer before this who didn’t exactly challenge us, he looked at us like we were young kids and kind of let us do whatever we wanted to do,” he said.
“But Ethan was like ‘no, we’re going to make this the best song we can and if I have to hurt your feelings to do it I will.’ It sounds weird, but it was tough love,” he said, which took the band to new heights.
As Quirk and the band grew in the studio, they also began making a name for themselves on stage. Their big break came when they performed at the Mercury Lounge, the legendary venue in downtown Manhattan, a show that Quirk said “opened the doors for every other venue in the city.”
But Cabin Fever isn’t just a New York City band, as Quirk and his bandmates have performed up and down the East Coast. Some of Quirk’s favorite places he’s performed at include The Coach Room in Philadelphia and the Middle East Club in Boston. Cabin Fever even made a trek north of the border for a show in Toronto, Canada on Jan. 29.
The band has also made a name for themselves in the Connecticut music scene with appearances at venues like Cafe Nine in New Haven and 10selden in Woodbridge. Quirk emphasized his good experiences sharing bills with bands in the Nutmeg State.
“Sometimes we play in certain cities and the bands are maybe not that nice, but every band we’ve ever played with in Connecticut has been the most friendly band in the world,” he said.
Quirk and Cabin Fever also recently performed at The Dog Pound in Storrs, saying that “I haven’t had that much fun at a show in a while” thanks to the energy of the Storrs crowd and their interest in his band’s music.
“It’s a super fun venue to play at,” he said. “Everyone was really interested in hearing what we had to play. Sometimes, we play house venues and maybe they just want to hear covers or mosh. Here, it felt like they want to mosh, but also hear what the music was and have a good time.”