I have always asked this one question and the answer has always been "Because."

Here's the question.

WHY do people feel the need to run DAW type software in live situations? Just think about that for a minute. If you are playing live, and you are playing (just to name a song on that HATED list) Mustang Sally. You get a sense that the bass is not loud enough. What are you going to do about it? You are playing live. You can't tell the crowd "I am going to stop the song so I can boost the bass track and start over." The mixing aspect of the song is over with when you play live. You are going to play whatever it is. That being said, why not just compile them into good quality WAV files and play whatever you are going to add live to the WAV that you play back through the PA? Success comes from simplicity. The more variables you can remove, the less chance you have for failure. Why play drum tracks through a drum machine when they are the exact tracks that you recorded? That introduces the possibility of a drum machine failure to your process. And if you decide the bass on ol' Mustang Sally is too quiet, live with it that day, go back to your tracks in your home studio, boost the bass, render it again, and replace the one you don't like. Is it just a matter of thinking that the crowd will be wowed by the amount of gear you bring in?

My suggestion, my opinion (how sad that I have to add that disclaimer) is to dump those songs into WAV files, put them on a hard drive, and play them back through a powered mixer feeding 2 cabinets. The places you said you want to play simply won't care about anything other than you providing some much needed entertainment to break up their daily routine.

One of my friends, in fact the guy who engineered my CD, played shows for YEARS with an iPod of some flavor (a Nano maybe) that sat on his music stand and he played guitar and sang. The tracks he had created were as lush as any live performance I ever heard. He did a cover of Walk Away Renee with 8 layers of BGV, 4 synth tracks... The sound was huge. From his iPod. The HARD work was in his home studio where he recorded it all. but that really doesn't impress anybody. (He told me he spent 3 days JUST on the harmony singing on Walk Away Renee.) Now, this particular guy plays drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and has a 4 octave vocal range and has won some local award for his production and engineering, and his standards are so high that I would offer the opinion that the backing vocals were probably fine after 2 takes, but that is just an aside to explain how good you cam make things sound and play them from an iPod.

I once went with him to play in a place that wanted a duo, and the deal was that if I didn't know the song, I would just turn the volume on my keyboard down and fake play. The same with vocals. If I didn't feel comfortable hitting a note, I just silently mouthed it. AND at the end of the night I got paid!! LOL

Bottom line, KISS applies. Do your hard work at home.