“Northern White Clouds” is one of the experimental instrumentals Bill Monroe wrote late in life, composed in the late 1980s while Billy Joe Foster was his fiddler. Monroe played the unfinished tune onstage with little rehearsal, and the fiddler’s improvising helped shape how others came to play it.
An unusual, atmospheric piece, “Northern White Clouds” stands apart from the standard bluegrass breakdown. It reflects the freer, more adventurous side of Monroe’s writing in his last decades.
The tune has been taken up by bluegrass fiddlers drawn to Monroe’s later work. The version heard here is by Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper.
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