The soundtrack of a family: Clint McCune’s greatest song is the life he’s built

Published 1:30 am Sunday, June 21, 2026

There is a moment Clint McCune’s daughter, May, still can’t get through without tears. She was 5, maybe 6 years old, sitting in the family’s apartment one holiday season, when her father picked up his guitar and began to play — some of his sadder songs, ones that talked about love. “I remember oftentimes I’d have to go into another room because I was crying so much,” May recalls. “It just felt super personal to me. It just made me feel so much.” This Father’s Day, the truest thing about McCune isn’t found on any album. It’s found in his family.

To understand Clint as a father, you have to understand the father who shaped him.

“I had the best dad in the world,” he says simply. “From a little kid, my best friend was my dad and my relationship with him. He set an example of what I thought was an important way to be,” Clint says. “One of the things was to stick up for the little guy. And that was always dear to my heart.”

Clint lost his father when he was just 21. It is a loss he carries quietly. “I often have thought, keep a little bit of him on my shoulder when watching the kids grow,” he says. “I would want him to see how similar they are in different ways to him. I feel like I get to kind of know him better the more I have those moments with my own kids.”

When McCune and his wife Sara Pelfrey fell in love, they built a business together. Then their family grew, and they made a choice. They sold it.

“We knew it was going to be too hard to dedicate all those hours to owning a business and wanted to dedicate more time to the kids,” McCune explains. “Being able to be with the kids was the best gift I ever got — to be able to catch that time when they’re young. And that’s so special.”

Pelfrey, who returned to school and built her own career during those years, has never forgotten what that sacrifice meant. “Having somebody like Clint be this person who is next to me raising these remarkable kids — I don’t think I could choose a better partner for that,” she says. “He’s such a remarkable human. And I see it absolutely in our kids every day.”

Music never left — it simply changed shape.

“As soon as I became a dad, all that went out the window and I came up with songs, 20 songs a day,” he laughs. “My creativity became less judgmental, more open.” He placed instruments next to the toys and let his children find them on their own terms. “No sound was wrong. This wasn’t about trying to learn the form of an instrument, but just be familiar with what it feels like to have these things in their hands.”

For Pelfrey, the result has been a living family document. “How Clint creates art, specifically music, it becomes really like the soundtrack of our lives,” she says. “Music becomes this continuity of storytelling of how our worlds have evolved. It’s like a photo album, but in a different kind of way.” She describes watching treasured friends dance together at her recent birthday concert, where Clint performed. “We are alive, we’re in this human experience,” she says. “And it’s always really precious.”

His oldest daughter, Katie, now in her late 20s, has felt that influence across her entire life. “Between letting me put on my own rock concerts as a kid to teaching me how to be an adult, he has been an integral part for me to know how to be a compassionate, honest member of the community,” she says.

Charlie, one of McCune’s twins, has already stepped into her father’s world in the most direct way possible — performing alongside him on stage at a protest rally on the Village Green. For the McCunes, there is rarely a set list or much warning. “I don’t usually know if I’m going to go on stage until like a couple minutes beforehand,” Charlie says. For McCune, the moment was overwhelming. “I was so proud of her courage and bravery to stand up there and do that,” he says. “To be able to look at my side and see her singing like that — that same thing in me that’s in her has a way to get out, has a way to communicate. That’s kind of all I’ve wanted for my kids.”