Cara (my brother Kevin’s oldest) recently asked me to find this song. It was recorded 20+ years ago in my bedroom at my parents house during my College years. I was doing some recording, noodling around, when Cara, then age 4-5 came to visit with her favorite Uncle Bryan. I think Grandma was picking her up from preschool and she was staying at our house ’til Mom picked her up after work. Cara would come down and want to play on my synthesizer (a Casio CZ1000) or whatever.

This day, I had my harmonica out and she wanted to play it; so she was playing it and asked her if she wanted to make a song. Then I asked her what she wanted to call the song and she said, “Better Stop Shaking.” So I picked up the guitar and hit the record button and this is what you hear. No editing.

You can hear me coaxing the first couple phrases, but after that, she took over and I just played. She’s playing the harmonica AND singing while I’m playing guitar. I added the Farfisa organ later (a REAL Farfisa organ I bought for $50 from David and Sean Johnson’s brother).

I’ve always thought this was an awesome song in how Cara expresses truly genuine feelings. In the first part of the song about spanking and whatnot she was being a bit Procacious. She was smiling and playing with it, (although as she kept jamming on the harmonica, tears would come to her eyes). Then in the latter part when she started talking about monsters and stuff, she was really getting into it and expressing real feelings.

I remember around this time we had been having some aggressive thunderstorms and hail which were frightening to her and she was crying and trying to work through her fear about them. I can’t remember if I suggested or it was something her mother or dad would say to her, but what calmed her about the thunder and rain was that it was Jesus playing drums.

And, finally, one great part about the song is how Cara ties it all together at the end with the song title. It’s really quite beautiful.

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