Lakeshore Records released “Quill” on Friday, giving audiences a first extended listen to Matthew McConaughey’s singing voice ahead of the August 14 release of “The Rivals of Amziah King.” The bluegrass number, built around banjo and close harmonies, doubles as the soundtrack’s lead single and appears in the film alongside performances from co-star Ben Hardesty and musicians Miranda Zickler, Angelina LookingGlass and Andrea Pister.
McConaughey plays Amziah King, a beekeeper and self-appointed community fixture in a small Oklahoma town who runs both the area’s top honey operation and an informal bluegrass band with his friends. The plot turns when King’s estranged foster daughter, Kateri, played by LookingGlass in her screen debut, returns to his life just as rivals move to sabotage his business.
Written and directed by Andrew Patterson, the film premiered at South by Southwest in March 2025 to a standing ovation, with McConaughey telling the Paramount Theater crowd he hadn’t realized how heavily the script leaned on live music until he watched a finished cut. “It’s also kind of a musical,” he said, noting the film opens with a folk performance outside a drive-in restaurant and includes six live numbers featuring cast members playing their own instruments.
Rob Morgan, who appears in the ensemble alongside Scott Shepherd, Tony Revolori and Kurt Russell, said the cast treated the music as part of daily life on set rather than a rehearsed bit, describing informal jam sessions that became routine during production. Critics who saw the SXSW cut praised McConaughey’s performance as among the strongest of his career and singled out LookingGlass’s debut, helping build momentum for a film that marks the actor’s return to features after six years away.
Black Bear Pictures is opening “Rivals” in limited release on August 14 before expanding wide the following week. The studio’s rollout has leaned heavily on the music, positioning “Quill” as an introduction to a soundtrack that reviewers who caught early screenings have called one of the more distinctive scores of the year. The film runs 131 minutes and was shot largely on location, giving the musical sequences a lived-in, unpolished quality that has become a recurring talking point among early audiences.
