The only reason I got into Square Dance calling in the first place, was due to my best friend from High School – Paul Cote.

Paul and I called together as “The Duo!” from our Class Graduation Night in 1988, until about 1997. Paul stepped away from Square Dancing at that point, but I continued. He found his way back to the activity with a little help from me in 2005, and in 2011 he launched a record label he called “EGO Recordings”.   

In 2012 he invited me to join him and together we put out 30+ tunes. In 2017 he thought he was done with the label, so he gave me my tunes, and I moved on to create Throw Back Tunes that same year.

Paul couldn’t fight the music bug though, and he went on to produce another dozen or so songs for his label over the coming years. When times got to be a little tough, he decided to sell the label.

But even though he again thought he was done, he managed to put out a few more tunes under a label called “Next Chapter Recordings”, releasing its first of three bundles of music in November 2022. To me, NCR is just an extension of EGO, and I’ll be folding those tunes in here and rebranding them as EGO, as they should have been.

NCR would be Paul’s last foray into music production as sadly, Paul would leave this world on April 7th, 2023.

My life would have taken a very different path if not for Paul. Our 40+ years of friendship lived through many ups and downs – but at the end of the day, it felt like EGO should be here with TBT. Many thanks to Rick and Mary Ellen for help making it happen. It feels good to have Paul “home”.

I’m so happy to have everything in one place. I’ll never be able to share the stage with him again, but we’re together here and that’ll do. Love and miss you my friend. God speed.