Re: Some thoughts on "mixing"
Of course.
Very few bar bands have a dedicated soundman. Even some of the best ones in my area mix from stage. For those that have a dedicated soundman, I haven't seen one mix from out front for years. The ergonomics of most bars simply don't allow room for it.
Over the years, I have gone from a large passive FOH (Klipsch KP301's over Cerwin Vega folded horns), a snake, and a dedicated soundman out front, down to an all powered speaker FOH mixed from stage.
I used to do a speaker eq using pink noise, find optimal speaker placement, yada yada yada. We still had issues.... like the soundman showing up late or not at all. The quality of people professing to being able to mix live sound was sketchy at best. The ones that were worth a damn were hard to get booked, the money in a bar band doesn't justify the expense of a decent sound guy, etc, etc.
I am moving to a digital mixer so I can setup patches for the mixer as well. As long as I can get the gain consistent for the channels at the soundcheck, this should provide a superior mix to what I am currently doing (analog MixWiz with slight tweaks to vocal channels depending on who is singing lead). The key is going to be getting CONSISTENT volume from the guitars for each song. In other words, the lead player can do what he likes as long as he does it consistently every night (with respect to volume in various songs).
I still think that the old pedal board efx are a PITA for bar bands. Too many things go wrong with them and the tone is never consistent (nor is the output levels). There are plenty of good all-in-one efx boxes out there today which provide more than enough quality efx that you don't need stomp boxes and guitar volume knob changes to get a great sound. I think it is just what some guys are used to.
I think that mixing from stage is a necessary workflow for most bands. When I play a larger venue that has an installed live sound system (and usually a sound engineer who gets part of the pay for the night), it is surely a breath of fresh air (especially since I don't have to move my own gear 
), but those venues are by far and away the minority (maybe 1 out of 20).
The appeal that the new digital mixers have for me is that they can optimize the workflow for mixing from stage in ways not previously possible. I can practice a song with the band, playback the audio through the mixer and get everything sounding perfect (at least as perfect as we play it ), and save the scene for recall at the gigs.
Can you see where I am coming from?
