I do not often play "out" live..... but on the occasions I do, if it's not going to be just me and an acoustic guitar, I make backing tracks.

I write the song in BB and then use Real Band to render the various instrument tracks to audio files.

I import the audio files as tracks into my Sonar DAW and do the editing and enveloping there. I then export the final wave from Sonar without the lead vocal or my acoustic guitar. I burn that to a CD and pop the CD into a player at the gig site.

To hear what this sounds like, simply visit my web site (link in my signature) and click MY MUSIC and listen to a few of the songs there. They are all done in the method I describe above with the vocals and acoustic included in the mix.

Yeah... it's totally do-able.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.