Phoenix band There Is No Us to play Maynard James Keenan's new cafe

Call it a concert with a visual art bonus, or a photography exhibit with live entertainment; either way you look at it, photographer and musician Jim Louvau has something new planned for Saturday night in northern Arizona.

The frontman for industrial band There Is No Us and renowned local shooter is bringing together both of his artistic pursuits into one event at Queen B Vinyl Cafe, Maynard James Keenan's new multifaceted space in Old Town Cottonwood.

The show will begin at 8 p.m., when Jane N' the Jungle open for There Is No Us, and throughout the day, visitors to Queen B can see some of Louvau's photography on the walls.

The idea came about when Louvau was looking to do something "totally different" than anything he'd done before, he says.


"This isn’t a conventional music venue by any means, and I feel like Maynard isn’t a conventional dude, so I feel like it all makes sense, it’s all on-brand and when they asked us play, my first idea was, 'How can I do something other than just There Is No Us in a record store?' So I asked him and (Keenan's wife) Jen, 'Would you guys be open to the idea of me doing a photo exhibit in here during the day so I can do something different?'"

All the images in the exhibit are music-related, and they represent Louvau's work over the past few years.

"I thought about the stuff I did in the past few years, and a lot of the stuff I’ve done in the past few years is some of my favorite work I’ve ever done," he says. "I did specifically want to include some extra Maynard-esque stuff. Obviously, he and I have worked together a bunch. Over the past couple of years, we’ve done quite a bit of stuff together, gotten to know each other really well and I wanted to pull some stuff out that no one had seen before that I thought would be cool on a wall."

All the photos are framed, and all are for sale for $500 each, although selling them wasn't Louvau's original intention.

"I wasn’t really going into this with the intention of trying to sell stuff, but then I realized there’s a pretty good chance people are going to ask about it. The best part of that is so much of this, probably half of this is coming off my walls at home. So if someone buys something that’s on my walls, then I have to replace it," he says.

We asked Louvau how the famously loud There Is No Us would modify their act for a store show in a quiet small town.

"You don’t," he says. "That’s the There Is No Us way. We know we’re noisy. We know we’re abrasive. There’s very much a punk rock attitude onstage. Again, I don’t know how many record stores we’re going to play in in our career. This is the first one, and it’ll give us an idea of what that will be like."

There Is No Us may be new at playing in a record store, but they've got plenty of performances under their belt. They got off their last tour about six weeks ago and are heading out for a stint of West Coast dates in January.

The last tour was "super-successful," Louvau says. "Going out and playing in front of strangers every night and winning people over. Selling a ton of merch. That’s really how you know how you’re doing out there. If you go see a new band you’ve never heard of and they knock your socks off, you’re going to go buy merch and tell your friends about it. We saw that every night for a month."


As a musical and visual artist, Louvau says he finds gratification in both pursuits, but music hits a little deeper.

"Musically, there’s something about being on stage in front of complete strangers. Our record came out in August and we just found out that we’re one of the top-selling Cleopatra (Records) bands of the year, so it’s not like we were going places where no one knew who we were, but we were definitely going place we’d never been. For me, being able to connect musically is incredible.

"That being said, I love working with other artists and I love being part of their visual presentation. But the end of the day, there’s nothing better than doing your own thing."