The last time Toronto writer-comedian-actor Rick Moranis was up for a Grammy Award it was over 20 years ago.

The occasion was a nod for best comedy album for 1983's Great White North featuring him and fellow SCTV alumnus Dave Thomas as those lovable beer-swilling, toque-wearing hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie.

Now Moranis, 52, once again finds himself in the Grammy race for best comedy album for his bluegrass-and-rockabilly-tinged country collection, The Agoraphobic Cowboy, was hits record stores today.

The Grammy ceremony takes place tomorrow night at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles (CBS/Global, 8 p.m.)

"Oh, I don't think I have a shot at winning it but I'm not competitive," says Moranis, down the line from his Manhattan home where he's lived since 1985. "I've lost before and I'll be honoured to lose again. Dave Thomas and I, I think we lost to a Richard Pryor standup album. So I'd be happy to lose to a Chris Rock standup album. It would be a perfect bookend to an inadvertent comedy album career."

The idea for The Agoraphobic Cowboy came to Moranis from his daughter, who was listening to a lot of bluegrass, alt-country and jam bands a couple of years ago and had a boyfriend who was a mandolin player.

"I remember growing up listening to the funny crossover country hits that made it onto the old CHUM charts of the '60s by Ray Stevens and Roger Miller," says Moranis, who got his start as a radio producer and deejay at Toronto's CHFI. "There's just a limited number of places you can do humourous music. For some reason country's a place that there's a lot of funny stuff. It just got into my head. So on any given day if I came up with a funny idea, instead of trying to write an essay or an op-ed piece, or whatever else I was doing in those days, I would just try to write a song."

Eventually, Moranis was referred to Brooklyn-based musician-producer Tony Scherr, who did some early recordings with Norah Jones and Jesse Harris, and has also worked with Canadians Chris Brown and Kate Fenner in his basement studio.

The resulting polished musicianship isn't unlike something you might hear from a bluegrass artist with a really good sense of humour as such songs as Press Pound, It's The Champagne Talkin', Oh So Bucco and Four More Beers can attest. There's even a funny take on Hank Snow's 1962 classic, I've Been Everywhere, which Moranis recast as I Ain't Goin' Nowhere, thus the album title.

Moranis, who previously recorded the much more experimental You, Me, The Music And Me, in Canada in 1989, which included a rap version of The Girl From Ipanema and went on to sell about 20,000 copies, released The Agoraphobic Cowboy last year on his own website via New York-based Artistshare. com, which mainly represents jazz artists.

But good word-of-mouth and the Grammy nod led to Moranis striking a deal with an independent distributor owned by Warner Music.

"They liked the product, they recognized that it had a somewhat famous guy attached to it and a Grammy nomination, and they're not on the hook at all. I have to take on the costs of the manufacturing and the marketing," he explains.

Speaking of which, Moranis wasn't sure if he was going to attend the Grammys due to the cost of sending himself there.

"I got this pain-in-the-ass artist, which is me, who wants to be flown first class and stay in a decent hotel," he jokes. "And as the record company, which is me, I don't want to pay for the guy's perks. So I'm fighting with him, because if he's going to go, he's going JetBlue and he's renting a little car and staying in a dump or at a friend's house. So I got problems with my artist."

But what about his 19-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son? Don't they want to accompany dear old dad?

"Two words came out of both of their mouths, instantly gift bag," he jokes. "I raised my kids in New York, very, very far from show business and they're excited that this is all happening. They like to see me busy with something like this and having a good time but they don't really want to go or expect to go. If it were in New York, it'd be different. We'd go down the street."