Tapestry Supersonic Sunday Mini-Festival

The Tapestry Festival is a labour of love. It's the ongoing adventure of a Camden plasterer called Barry Stilwell who decided a decade ago that he wanted a festival of his own. Irritated by the way corporate branding was piggy-backing festival culture, and disgusted by stringent spoilsport ground-rules at many outdoor events, he started his own in 2003, mostly showcasing bands who'd played his monthly Euston-based club night.

In previous years Tapestry has taken place at a Cornish Wild West theme park and a medieval castle in Wales, with attendees dressing to match. This year, Barry decided on a one-dayer in the walled garden at Shenley Park in Hertfordshire, a 500-year-old property that spent much of the 20th century functioning as a mental hospital. It's a lovely location and the weather was idyllic, sunny but with a slight breeze taking the edge off. What's more, it proved a perfect place for family festivalling. I went along with my daughters, aged seven and 12, and the walled garden contained them while allowing them to roam free around its landscaped terraces.

No cashpoints here, no mobile phone charging stations or grotty burger vans, just a barbecue, a fruit and salad stall, a fanzine stall, and a bar run by Clerkenwell's Betsey Trotwood pub selling real ale, scrumpy and cans of Asahi Japanese lager. The crowd were easy-going, mostly in their forties and fifties, salt 'n' pepper-haired blokes in band tee-shirts and voluptuous women in chic Fifties party dresses, many with children in tow. There were even a couple of small dogs on leads (a rare site at post-millennial festivals). All spent most of the day sprawled on the grass, sunbathing, snoozing, drinking and rummaging in picnic hampers (or, at least, their cheerfully downmarket rucksack equivalents).

First onstage were Blacklist, a local band from St Albans whose US-tinged indie sounded very ordinary. Fortunately there were other unscheduled entertainments. The terracing was deceptively steep and, upon sitting down with my first scrumpy, I watched a fellow carrying a tray of drinks slide onto his arse depositing four pints over himself - pure slapstick that even he had to laugh at. Elsewhere a giant table parasol was carried off by a sudden breeze and chased over a shrubbery by its owner.

All afternoon, between acts, a small marquee hosted Hemel Hempstead Brass Band who gamely trotted through various medleys - ABBA, Mary Poppins, etc - to much applause.  In many ways their cheery tootling suited the lazy English Sunday afternoon mood better than amplified rock bands, next of which was Oldboy, a trio fronted by James Walbourne, The Pretenders guitarist for the last half decade. They held down a tight set of raunchy Southern boogie, a sassy younger British ZZ Top without the beards.

As my daughters and I sat eating our Hula Hoops and pre-prepared sandwiches - proper recession festivalling - observing a nearby community of wood wasps tending to their burrows, the afternoon was boosted by the arrival onstage of Mr B, the Gentleman Rhymer. Moustachioed and clad in a blazer and straw hat, he led off with an amusing history of hip-hop played on the banjolele, spoken precisely in the Queen's English. He followed this with "Timothy", a song detailing how much Radio One DJ Tim Westwood had, allegedly, changed since he and Mr B's school days ("He was a whiz with a cricket bat/ But he never used to talk like that"), and concluded with a medley of classic rave tunes, again played on his uke. Great fun.

Watch "Chap-Hop History" by Mr B, the Gentleman Rhymer on YouTube



Neither of the next two bands pierced my consciousness in the way the pints of scrumpy were fabulously doing, so I sat and chatted with nearby picnickers while my daughters played a variation on hide and seek that, for reasons only children know, included additional make-believe horses. Both bands might have been great, especially in a small venue at night but, blazing sun and daylight did no favours for the intriguing melee of Afro-grooves and avant-indie jamming that was Zun Zun Egui, although they're certainly ones to watch. The same could be said of Scottish group Trembling Bells, especially as they're favourites of perennial psyche-folk visionary Joe Boyd, always a man with a sharp eye. They were, however, wasted on me. I pondered them awhile unmoved then gave up on recession-friendly eating and went in search of a heavy-weight organic beef-burger. At around this point a heavily accented voice from the stage grabbed my attention and we were treated to a short but bitingly funny comedy set by Henning Wehn, the German stand-up whose stock-in-trade is comparing the mind-sets of our two nations. Of course he had an absolute blast with the relative recent achievements of both our national football teams.

As afternoon melted into evening, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis took to the stage. The band consists of the two daughters and son, aged 17, 21 and 19 respectively, of recording engineer Graeme Durham and his partner Ingrid Weiss (once of all-female post-punk outfit The Raincoats). Durham, hunched over an acoustic guitar, and Weiss, bopping with her double bass, accompanied their progeny and looked as if they were having the time of their lives. Within a couple of songs, so was I and so were my daughters as we joined a crowd who, for the first time, had gathered in front of the stage. KD&L specialise in sounds from the dawn of rock'n'roll, country and blues exploding into each other. They worked up a lather as they continually swapped instruments - particularly the intense sailor-suited Daisy with her frantic drumming - and paid musical homage to the likes of Louis Jordan and Johnny Cash. Towards the end of their set they were joined by the septuagenarian Jamaican trumpet-player Eddie "Tan Tan" Thornton who acted as lively as a man half his age and let rip with his horn on a joyous run-through of KD&L's single "(Baby) Hold Me Tight".

Next on were a band who looked far from innocent; the leathery, black-clad Jim Jones Revue, slick-quiffed and calculatedly debauched in the way that only determined men who've lived beyond rock-star prime age but won't give up can. They blasted out loud Little Richard-style rockers but spiked with the noisy sleaze-punk raucousness of The Stooges. They're a great live act but, somehow, the day belonged to Tapestry regulars Kitty, Daisy & Lewis who tuned into the essence of the festival, balancing the musical needs of pre-teens who wanted entertainment, yummy mummies in cool retro dresses, and beer-boosted men ready to have a strut. Having said that, there was one final act, headliners The Magic Numbers but I had to depart to catch the last train to the South coast with my girls, so we missed them. Instead we wandered off down a country road to Radlett station in the sun's fading glow, eagerly enthusing to each other about a truly delicious day out. The affable Barry Stillwell had delivered once again.

• theartsdesk's round-up of UK festivals 2010