A couple of points:

Notes, if I had a talented and beautiful wife like you do, I'd prefer playing duos with her as well. Beats the hell out of 4 sweaty old dudes EVERY day of the year!

And added to all the reasons for the decline in live music, factor in the drinking age change in the mid 80s. When it went from 18 to 21 in Ohio, clubs started closing the instant the gavel hit the desk because they lost the college kids. This area went from too many clubs and not enough bands to a handful of clubs that bands were fighting over. Tha led to bands playing for what we now consider insulting money just so they could play. I hung on until about 1994 but realized I needed a big boy job and retired from music.

Then there is the added scrutiny from police DUI enforcement teams. These days we are closer to a police state than I care to be, where poklice can invent "probable cause" to just pull over random cars and make them walk the line. With what DUI fine does to your insurance rates, everybody is afraid of being that random car.

It's all interrelated, and honestly I think the size of the band doesn't matter as much as threads like this make it out to be. When you play in restaurants where the stage is a 4x8 sheet of plywood, you can't bring a real band in, so you use Real Band....