Using Cakewalk As Accompaniment

Have any solo performers out there used their laptops as accompaniment to play gigs? Is this a lousy idea or does it have some merit? Seems like I could play guitar along with some of my tracks and get some additional sound going. Any suggestions?

I was on a cruise last year and there was a guy using a laptop to play backing tracks and playing the guitar along with those, MC would be a great program to build those tracks i would probably not use it to play the tracks but would turn them into MP3s and play them that way, to cut down on the resources needed to play the files. using something like pyro or music match to play the files, and to organize them.

One of the things i like to do is to find Midi files on the net, of songs that i like and then running them thru softsynths to make them sound good, then i remove the tracks i might want to play live like the accoustic guitar, or lead guitar track and then save those as finished Wave or MP3 file as backing tracks.

I've often thought of using CW to back up my band - which is only my buddy and me. Question: what's a convenient way to control the playback of the tracks. For example, yoo are going to want to be able to start and stop each song at varying times (depending on how many standing ovations you get, for example). Any ideas besides manually controlling the laptop?

Marcel - Tongue firmly in cheek

Meadowman - That is true of guitarist, between playing and patting one's self on the back for that fine lead riff!!