Early Stages
Flanders and Adler began writing songs together while still in their teens growing up in Montclair, New Jersey.
Flanders and Belica met as dormitory roommates at Yale University. In their senior year they collaborated with Adler to write the musical revue Measure By Measure. In 1981 they were accepted as a team into the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, studying first with Lehman Engel and then Maury Yeston. Other students in that class included Michael John LaChiusa and Gerard Alessandrini.
Adler and Sabatino met at a jam session in New York City. At the time Adler was finishing his Master’s thesis in music composition at Rutgers University. Together with their friend, Paul Byrne, they started a music production company, Tritone Productions. In 1985 they built a recording studio in a New Jersey garage, which Adler would eventually use to produce the first demo recordings of singer/songwriter Lee Feldman and Sufjan Stevens' college band, Marzuki. October Project would use the studio as its home base during its developmental phase.
Flanders met Fahl in New York City and introduced her to Adler in the summer of 1989. October Project rose from that meeting.
The band spent eighteen months in Tritone's garage studio refining their instrumentation and arrangements, and occasionally changing their configuration. The initial lineup (as of October 1989) included Paul Byrne (guitar) and Mark Huntley (drums/vocals). Byrne and Huntley left after a few months. Urbano Sanchez was later recruited as percussionist and was invited to join the band, but declined in favor of retaining sideman status. The band was without a name during its developmental phase. The name "October Project" was inspired by a folder with this label that Adler kept and that pertained to an upcoming performance opportunity.
The band quickly earned a devoted following by playing regularly at many of the music clubs of downtown Manhattan, including the Speakeasy, the Sun Mountain Cafe, Beowulf, CB's 313 Gallery, and the Bitter End. Talent manager Peter Ciaccia saw the band performing at CBGB, and approached them to become their manager. They soon took up residence at the original Café Sin-é on St. Mark's Place, where they often played alongside other developing artists of the time, most notably Jeff Buckley.
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