Back in the 70's, I played the nightclub/Holiday Inn circuit as a one-man band: Guitar, vocals, Roland Rhythm 77 drum machine, and a left-foot-powered Moog Taurus bass synth. It was five or six sets a night, five nights a week, so it tended to blow out my voice.
 
If I caught a cold and needed to rest my voice during a set, I used a Teac cassette deck with tapes prerecorded with the drum machine and vocal. No count-in, just a short vocal click, and then into the song. I'd play the guitar and bass pedals live.
 
It got me through a few nights. Particularly late at night when my voice was getting raw, and everyone else in the joint was too plastered to notice that I was lip-syncing.
 
The last time I played live was 15 years ago, and I only played out a couple of times. For backup, I used a CD I had burned. One stereo channel was for the backing tracks (drums, bass, keyboards, rhythm guitar, backup vocals) and was directed into the PA, and the other stereo channel was directed into my headphone, and was just the drums with a click count-in so that it was easier to keep time. The monitor mix to my headphone was the drum/click track, plus my live lead vocal, plus a little of my live guitar.
 
I'm thinking of playing live again, possibly with a neighborhood band of players who have only rudimentary musical skills, so I'll be following this thread for more up-to-date ideas (Teac cassette decks? CD's? Cuneiform clay tablets?). Time marches on.

Mostly I use Sonar rather than Winamp or similar because I like the having the markers for sections, it's a safety net really in case I forget where I am If I wander for some reason.  But also If I have a track that's a bit hot or soft I can adjust it a bit and save it.  Sometimes maybe the Bottom end is wonky and a simple eq gets it close enough without having to re mix it.
 
The biggest reason of course is it's what I know and it works for me. Oh and my playlist is very readable for my aging eyes.

Cactus Music
Tenfoot:
Thanks, I think I've read a few posts of yours about your successful use of the Playlist. I can see why you use multi track output as you must be running to a FOH system with a sound person. That's good information as I keep forgetting how a re mix might be required as you move from room to room. But, I guess I have a problem thinking of any Rock and Roll or Country for that matter that would use more than a few tracks? I guess R&B with a 10 piece horn section :) So You have my curiosity,, what are those 24 tracks? I can see maybe 5 or 7 for drums. A Piano, and organ, after that I'm only pondering. Is this electronic music? 
 

 
Haha - I guess you are right for basic rock and country arangements Cactus. My show for the last couple of years has been reinventions of quirks, classics and casualties from the 70's to the 10's. They tend to be big, ecclectic arrangements involving anything from symphonic scores to Japanese Taiko drums or dance loops and your ten piece horn section. Tons of fun to do though. I do use a FOH engineer at larger gigs, but also have everything down to channel mutes and delay and reverb times automated for smaller onstage mixes. Affordable yet extraordinarily capable digital mixers have really opened up what's possible.  Also a big fan of the Dave Rat breathy squeezy method of parallel compression for live gigs which is only possible with separate returns to the desk and a fistful of compression busses and DCA's. 

Don:
Thanks I always enjoy hearing stories from the past. I remember folks using 4 track porta studios. Standard Cassette players were mostly avoided because they played back at different pitches. This performer came in to play at the Care Home were I work and he had this weird old Peavey Digital cassette Karaoke machine. He said he had done thousands of gigs with it. It sounded terrible! And he had to fuss about switching cassettes and changing keys etc. Then a lot of them would start in the middle. Oh Dear, good thing old folks don't notice or care.  But it's what he was comfortable with and I kept my mouth shut.  
 
CD's we soon found out skip when the dance floor gets hopping. I bought one of the first CD stand alone burners for $900, still have it. 
 
Myself I stayed with my Atari/midi set up until Sony mini disks came out. I transferred all 180+ of my songs in real time from my Korg 05/RW  to the Mini disk player, You could name the songs, Sound quality excellent, pitch perfect and a handy remote. But set lists required re recording or transferring in real time all the songs plus re entering names. Later Sony came out with transfer software and life was better. I still have all the mini disks and 4 players gathering dust.  
 
A laptop or tablet is certainly all that's needed. I've even seen people use cell phones but man that was painful seeing them squint at the screen and taking forever between songs. 
I'm all about fast turnaround between songs. I use a foot switch and try and top and tail my songs tight when I master them. 
 
Sixfinger:
The biggest reason of course is it's what I know and it works for me. Oh and my playlist is very readable for my aging eyes.
 
 
This I agree with 100%, If it works then why change, It's why I'm reluctant to start using the Playlist, my system has worked for me for a long time. All I'm after is the Midi patch changes for my Vocal and guitar effects. My alternative is to continue tap dancing on my pedals. 
 
Tenfoot:  Awesome! Sounds like a fun gig! I'm tempted to go the digital mixer route. I still have my old Yamaha 01V and there's a lot I could still do with Sonar and midi controlling it.. but it's old and I'm not sure it can be trusted to be dependable. 
 
 

I have got a gig right now mixing live a tribute show band and they are using backing tracks.  We have found a good solution.  Firstly we use the DAW at home to produce the backing tracks.  NOT on stage.  I feel you are asking for trouble there.  Reliability is the key live.  The tracks are reduced to a stereo wave file at 44.1K 16 bit files..  (or Mp3 if you like but the wave files do sound better through a big PA) You can premix a backing track rather well in fact if you are careful.
 
We use an app called ShowOne and it runs own an iPad live. Here is the app:
 
http://musicappblog.com/showone-review/
 
You can get it from the app store:
 
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/showone-pro-backing-tracks/id983764757?mt=8
 
So the drummer in our case is running the app, but anyone can do it in the band.  It has been written by guys who have been using backing tracks for years and have never found the right app for this job. It works great! It is not expensive.
 
So tracks are easily imported then easily found and can be put into sets.  Sets can re arranged at the last minute too easily.  Tracks in a set still stop after each track and not play on.  In order for the click to be used with a stereo track you need a 4 channel output interface.  This one is small, cheap and does the job very well:
 
https://global.novationmusic.com/launch/audiohub-2x4#
 
(Any 4 channel out interface can be used of course but this one is small and very compact and sounds great. 
 
What is cool here is you buy the click add-on and the 4 channel add-on as well which is also cheap.  The click is generated by the app so it does not have to be in the backing track anywhere! (better if the backing track has been done to a click though) Pre count can be set. There is also another cue out or a guy saying 1,2,3,4 which can be set to count a bar before the click even comes in.  This is a great feature.  So you hear the guy saying 1,2,3,4 then the click does the precount and you are away.  The 4 channel interface allows the music and clicks and cues etc to be separate of course.  As the mixer I don't have any clicks or cues coming to me at all, that all goes to the drummer headphones. 
 
A high quality well mixed backing track can seamlessly be mixed in with the band.  It is very hard to tell what is live and what is not the backing etc.
 
This is more a bulletproof solution plus it is much less to carry around and can be set up in a minute. 
 
 
 

Thank you Jeff . I have an older iPad and I'll give it a go. 
 
I have posted my wish list in the past of my dream software. 
 
1- Plays 4 or more audio tracks -     Only plays 2 
2- Plays midi    - No 
3- Stops at end  - yes 
4- Drag and drop playlist - Not sure but seems possible. 
5- Lyrics ( Txt file)  pop up when song starts.  - No 
6- Control with foot switch.   Not easily
7- built in metronome for click.  - yes  
 
An interesting  app but really a regular player with the addition of a built in click track. Which is what a lot of people who have real drummers need. 

Cactus Music
 
1- Plays 4 or more audio tracks -     Only plays 2 
2- Plays midi    - No 
3- Stops at end  - yes 
4- Drag and drop playlist - Not sure but seems possible. 
5- Lyrics ( Txt file)  pop up when song starts.  - No 
6- Control with foot switch.   Not easily
7- built in metronome for click.  - yes  

 
With the exception of drag and drop, Sonar playlist does all of this Cactus. Is there something that you dislike about it?

I dunno... Back in the early naughties I played in a band and I used my Fostex VF08 for backing track and click. I don't think I could trust a laptop/PC.
 
Sorry for sounding negative about this but it's just the way I feel about the stability of both software and hardware.

Johnny sorry to get back  so late. I don't usually make it here on the weekends. 
 
The guy I mentioned in your point 1. is this guy. If you care to watch his over two hour video. He has found a way to do it he is comfortable with. I wouldn't necessarily adopt all of his methods. A few things I really liked were how he can download a whole band, have it in multitrack, and exclude certain tracks to his liking.If he wants a bass player he simply opens that track up in his setup. You can tell he does this all the time and has a system down.
 
https://youtu.be/XfB2EACvCYU
 
He is clearly a guitarist. Has a small *ahem* collection of them. I am primarily a pianist/keyboard player even though I have released an acoustic guitar record. I think sometimes I would like to have a keys part playing and play my guitar on stage more.
 
I really like the way Jeff describes the backing track setup he made and that interface is nice. Though I'm still a PC user, iPad is tough to beat for backing tracks. There are many inexpensive apps for live music backing tracks. A few seem to be using a stereo mix to the house. I have always thought that using anything other than mono is not recommended primarily because of the distance between the channels. You usually loose the image in large venues.
 
I am worship lead at a  church. As such I am usually on a grand piano with a drummer, bass and vocalists.  We are  old school. All floor wedges. No IEM's. Since I'm also lead vocal I usually stay with my strongest instruments so I can sing and play at the same time. When I'm on guitar I can't sing at the same time. I just don't know the instrument as well.I need to concentrate on playing it, unless it's a really simple kind of thing. I wanted to add additional synths and pads to the mixes, maybe extra drums, guitar parts and additional keys parts. 
 
The drawback to acoustic piano is it doesn't have midi. It might be tough convincing the church I need to use an 800.00 keyboard instead of their 30,000 dollar grand piano. The grand sounds better than any keyboard. Might need to midi the grand (if they let me).That's probably cost prohibitive at this point.
 
It's no trouble for me to play the songs into Sonar and add the parts. I played one of our songs into Sonar over the weekend, added some parts to it and it was really easy to do. I'm just not sure I want to fight with a laptop. Here's another idea for something that might work for some people. A kind of interface mixer hybrid product. It plays from an SD card. Has bluetooth if you want to stream music from a cell phone. Has play controls built into it and even a footswitch jack. I'm not sure what the footswitch is for.
 
USB mixer
 
 

Tenfoot: With the exception of drag and drop, Sonar playlist does all of this Cactus. Is there something that you dislike about it?
 
Absolutly not, If you read my posts this is why I started this thread to see how other people are using Sonar as a tool for making and playing backing tracks for traditional music, = Rock, Blues, R&B, Country, Folk, Bluegrass and Gospel. I"ll leave electronic and weird DJ set ups out of this because that's a different concept. So our lot is not interested in Abbleton and on the fly creations. We just need replacements for band members who are not on stage for what ever reasons. 
As I said I have been working for almost a year on my collection of tracks upgrading all the instruments etc. I'm adding keyboard parts as most of my old midi tracks are only drum and bass. I play in two different acts, one is a solo act for parties and dances, the other is a duo and we play my originals and acoustic stuff. So I'm dealing with over 200 songs total. 
I'm very happy with my currant set up and the only thing I cannot do with Win Amp is trigger midi. 
So my plan is over the winter, once all my songs are finally updated I will give Sonars Playlist a shot. 
 
 
Starise:  It sounds like that person is doing more than what a Karaoke track can do, Karaoke is not multi track. It is either the original song and someone managed to remove the vocals or they are done in studios and played as close to the original as possible. 
 
Synkrotron:  Well I've used my set up since WIndows XP , I've stayed with the same software for playback since day one after testing them all. Win Amp was made by the same folks who made Reaper. It hasn't been updated or touched in 10+ years but runs on W10 still because it was good code. 
I have never ever had my system fail me. And I always have a back up. 
My laptops I use for live are optimized and I stay with XP and W7 for stability. 
So your fears are unfounded. A laptop is no more or less reliable than my mixing board.