We have an opportunity to do some small, private venue, social event gigs. These venues have no PA or mixing boards so we need to be entirely self-contained. Our first is scheduled in April and I’m seeking ideas to play our backing tracks should our primary approach suffer technical failures at a gig. Right now, we have a keyboard player and myself on bass guitar but that could expand to include a percussionist, an acoustic guitar player and vocalists in the future.

Our PA system consists of a single QSC floor monitor. To various degrees we will have backing tracks that we will play along with. Our keyboard, a mic and the backing tracks will be inputs to my Tascam interface and will be output to the floor monitor. This is not that different from my home studio setup. The backup for the Tascam is a portable 6-channel Peavy mixer. And I’ll play my bass thru a 40W bass amp.

At this time our primary way of playing the backing tracks is to connect a Win 11 laptop to the Tascam (or Peavy mixer) via USB and the tracks will be played by my DAW (Fender Studio Pro). The bass players on these tracks will always be stem-removed. An added benefit of FSP is that it can display the chords as we play thru the songs.

I’m looking for a secondary method to play the backing tracks should my laptop fail at a gig. I’m thinking that I could load the playlist of songs (WAV or M4A files) on a portable digital audio player (DAP) with a 3.5 or 4.4mm output and with appropriate cabling, connect it to the Tascam (or Peavy). If this ends up as our backup audio player, I’d need to bring chord sheets in a 3-ring binder and a music stand, which is not a big deal.

To those with gig experience, am I thinking along the right path or is there a better approach than a DAP? If a DAP is the way to go, there are a ton out there. Any suggestions which one?

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BiaB 2026 Windows
For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.