Sidroe
Hey, Sock. We have the same legal statutes about clubowners being responsible here in Georgia as well. And I agree that it did have some what of an impact but not near as much as just the plain fact that you can't afford to go out anymore. Back when all our kids were living at home even before the markets fell it could cost close to 100 to 150 dollars just to take in a meal and a movie for us all. Nowadays, I couldn't even consider it.
Now the kids are grown and gone but the grand kids keep us hopping. I heard a comic once say," The good news is your kids are gone. The bad news is they're coming back. AND THERE'S MORE OF 'EM!"
It is a comfort to know, though, we are resilient and always find a way to adapt and continue making our art. Even if the technology forces us to find a way to continue. Thank heavens we have the tools that we do now. 

Most of my playing is virtual now - I play a one hour show each night from my house, broadcasting into 2nd Life on a shoutcast stream.  I play to 20-50 people a night, and make a little more than minimum wage, and it is really fun.  It is a way of adapting to a) the economic times, and b) aging lol.  This won't pay my rent but I have a day job so it doesn't have to.  It does pay for gear, and there is enough to fly somewhere and meet up with 50-100 other 2nd life musicians for a weekend jam.
 
Easier to demonstrate than to explain so... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aP6KfSADPY&list=PL108B16E64EABB509&index=21
 
Cheers
Grif

Steve I have been keeping an eye on that system your using as the bluetooth foot control would be a must for me, I just don't like to take my hands off my guitar unless I need a drink ( water these days) 
I keep everything in hands reach. 
Way back when I used  midi files on the Atari it automatically displayed text files. 
All you had to do was name the txt file the same as the mid file. 
And I miss using midi to change my effects. I even had a Marshall JMP 1 pre amp that changed with midi. 
So an iPad is looking more and more like the platform that is getting the right apps happening for live players. 

sock monkey
Steve I have been keeping an eye on that system your using as the bluetooth foot control would be a must for me

You don't have problems with bluetooth and latency / stability / predictability ?  I find bluetooth worse than wifi or usb radio, and they're not great either.
 

It's just a bluetooth foot control which is no different than a wireless mouse or keyboard. We are not talking about running audio though it which I will 100% agree must sound terrible, we are talking about turning lyric pages or stop/ starting the transport of playback software. 
I have used a USB foot controller since 2005 without any issues. 
 

Hi All!
 
Thanks for all the feedback while I was away. Great input!
 
BTW, this set-up is intended only to lay down the synth background for a rather classical rock band set-up i.e. basically bring some of the fantastic soft synths we used in the studio (to create some interesting atmospheric vibes) along to the live shows ... of course we're not making any money with that project. So we're unfortunately in the same boat, having a hard to find gig locations which pay enough to cover PA rental ... anyway, since the pianist also left (I reckon out of boredom - his part was only occasion fills in the background) we decided not to replace him and add his few lines to the synth playback ...
 
Well, meanwhile I did a lot of hands-on testing and figured that playlist work pretty nice!! We have now 4-10 tracks plus a click track per project, which can then be mixed individually with the live instruments by FOH and for individual monitor mixes ...
 
My own experiences so far:
+ playlist works flawlessly with WAV files / frozen tracks (which I would use wherever possible to keep load on DAW to a minimum)
+ SSD drives highly recommended (i.e. loading in background works nice on DAW with SSDs), but on the old test machine I get a minor sort-of-clickish-millisecond-hang a few measures into the loading (I think this when the loading has completed and it updates the screen according to the screen sets)
 
I currently don't play VSTs live and don't do any sample triggering from the matrix - although that's next on the agenda to test (but this is for a side project which is not yet performing live) ... so let's make it more complicate: anyone using playlist + matrix + MIDI controller to trigger loops and samples in live situations?  I reckon there must be few out there who are as nuts as myself ;-)