Country-rock veterans the Kentucky HeadHunters lead this independent-heavy release week with Songs From Grass String Ranch (Audium), their follow-up to 1997's Stompin' Grounds.

Robert Lee Castleman's Crazy As Me and Trent Summar & the New Row Mob's self-titled debut also bow Tuesday, as well as box sets from the Carter Family and Dick Curless and the Twangfest 2000 compilation Edges From the Postcard 4.

The HeadHunters gained a wide audience in the late 1980s and early 1990s with hits such as "Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine" (RealAudio excerpt), "Oh Lonesome Me" and "Dumas Walker." The group will play several fair and festival dates to support the new album through the end of the year.

Songs From Grass String Ranch tracks include: "Grass String Ranch," "Too Much To Lose," "Dry-Land Fish," "Jessico," "The Dreamin' Kind," "Louisiana Coco" and "Back to the Sun."

Trent Summar & the New Row Mob, with their rock roots and "shut up and fish" attitude, offer their self-titled VHR debut this week. Summar co-wrote eight of the 11 bursting-with-hardcore-twang cuts, including "I'm Country," which he penned with former Mavericks member Jerry Dale McFadden and Jared Reynolds.

Tracks include "Paint Your Name in Purple," "New Money," "Too Busy Missing You," "It Never Rains in Southern California" and "Starletta."

Singer, guitarist and former truck driver Robert Lee Castleman, who penned Alison Krauss' "Forget About It" (RealAudio excerpt), continues to write with his Rounder debut, Crazy as Me.

Tracks include "Like Red on a Rose," "I Can't Believe You (Unless You Lie)," "Stay Here," "Movin' Down (In the World)" and "Kinda Like a Rainbow."

The Carter Family's entire recording collection from their years at Victor, ARC, Decca, APS, Columbia and Bluebird Recordings was compiled for In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain, a Bear Family import box set. The package also includes interviews with Carter Family members. ASV re-releases the group's Wildwood Flower this week as well.

Edges From the Postcard 4 (Hayden's Ferry) features artists from Twangfest 2000, an annual Americana fest held in St. Louis.

Tracks feature Hayseed joining with Bonepony on "Some Kind of Balance"; Tim Carroll's "A Man on the Run"; Mark Rubin and His Jews of the Golden West's "Surfing Lake of the Ozarks"; Jim Stringer & the AM Band's "The Truth (As We Know It)"; Bobby Earl Smith on "Rear View Mirror"; Fear & Whiskey's "Since She's Gone"; the Rockhouse Ramblers' "Rockhouse Boogie"; and Lonesome Bob's "Things Change."

Other albums released this week: Dick Curless' Hard, Hard Traveling Man, a Bear Family import box set, and Blue Notes, from Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub, on Merge Records.