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Rick Moranis has remade himself into a spooked cowpoke — and a singing one at that.

Moranis, who tickled ribs in "Little Shop of Horrors," two "Ghostbusters" movies, "Spaceballs" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," is now crooning country tunes on "The Agoraphobic Cowboy," a Grammy-nominated CD that's winning accolades in Nashville, Los Angeles and even the dark hollows of Manhattan.

Not bad for a guy who doesn't consider himself a singer and describes his guitar playing as "lousy."

Moranis started out selling the album on his own Web site (www. rickmoranis.com) and recently signed a distribution deal with Warner Music Canada to get the disc in stores and boost online sales.

"I got into the black pretty quickly," Moranis said in an interview from his Manhattan apartment near Central Park. "Of course, my budget is pretty low."

Dark Helmet, as he was known in "Spaceballs," wears many hats at Moranis Inc. In addition to writing and singing his songs, he's also in charge of all the secretarial, shipping and public-relations duties.

"I really have been a one-man operation," said Moranis, one of the original cast members of the classic "Second City Television" comedy show.

So why would a successful comic actor shift gears and become a country singer-songwriter at the age of 52?

After his wife died of cancer in 1991, Moranis gradually withdrew from films so he could spend more time with his two young children. He began hanging out at home and started writing songs.

The country sound came naturally to the former Toronto DJ, whose musical inspirations include Ray Stevens, Roger Miller, Roy Orbison, Gordon Lightfoot, Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Another influence was his teenage daughter, a devoted fan of string-band music who is now away at college.

After writing a handful of songs, Moranis sang them to friends over the phone. The reaction was positive, so he decided to find a recording studio.

Moranis ended up with Tony Scherr, a jazz virtuoso who has a studio in his Brooklyn home. Scherr, who plays guitar on the album, assembled a band of first-rate musicians, including Dan Reiser on drums, Jason Mercer on banjo, Charlie Burnham on fiddle and Daniel Marcus on mandolin.

The result is an amusing, wry 13-song CD that features songs with vintage country titles like "Four More Beers," "Five-Star Motels," "Mean Old Man" and "It's the Champagne Talkin'."

One standout is "I Ain't Goin' Nowhere," a warp-speed parody of Snow's "I've Been Everywhere."

The song, co-written with Geoff Mack, is the purest expression of the Agoraphobic Way.

"I read Buckminster Fuller in college," Moranis explained. "He said we would get to the point when we'd never leave the house."

Actually, Moranis has been out and about promoting the album.

He has flown to Nashville to appear on Country Music Television and appeared on "Today" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," where his band included guitar wizard Bill Frisell. There's also talk of television specials and festival appearances, along with an invitation to play with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.