The lovely (in spirit and appearance) – young woman crosses her legs when she sits on an upholstered bench at Ben Folds’ Steinway and looks around the 75-by-45-foot room with the uncertain future.

“I love it,” she says, green eyes flashing. “It is my second home. I spend enough time here that it could be my first home. That includes sleeping time, too.”

Sorrel Brigman is studio manager of Grand Victor Sound, or what was until recent rebranding called “Ben’s Studio,” as it was the personal recording and storage space of Nashville-based pianist Ben Folds.

The Steinway is Folds’ instrument of choice, one he bought for its history as well as its excellence. The piano was specifically ordered by Frank Lloyd Wright for a house he was designing in Michigan, Sorrel says, adding the architectural innovator only ordered one other piano to fit a design in his entire career.

When the Wright house went up for sale, Folds was able to purchase the piano and put it here, with his other instruments and musical machinery, only using it when he was in town.

“Then this was Ben’s personal studio, a place to store his stuff,” says Brigman, 30. “Then he began to open it up for outside bookings in 2009.

“People don’t know what’s going on behind these walls …. A lot of people outside of the music industry didn’t know this space exists.”

The fact its existence isn’t broadcast in neon is good for the rock and country stars who have sought privacy while making some of their most significant recordings here for almost a half-century.

But the low profile also is a part of the reason the room that once was RCA Studio A has been targeted for demolition or reconstruction, prime real estate for one more set of Music Row condos.

“I’m all for progress,” says Sorrel, wistfully. “But this place is special.”

Most folks know about next-door neighbor RCA Studio B, which is run by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and is marketed as the place where Elvis made his hits.

But some of his recording also occurred inside this generic-looking office building that hides the hidden treasure of Studio A.

Much has been reported about the last-ditch efforts brought to light by Folds to save this space from the hungry steam-shovels (at least that’s what they called them when I was a kid) and other implements of destruction churning away at history to make space for more condos.

Sorrel is interested in the effort to save Studio A. After all, this is her place, her refuge after pulling up roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico, five years ago to pursue her dream of being a world-class sound engineer.

“I had taken a recording program in my high school in New Mexico,” she says, noting how her dream was birthed. Reinforced by University of New Mexico and audio-engineering school diplomas, she knew it was time to leave Albuquerque.

Her choices were pretty simple: The big recording centers of New York, Los Angeles and Nashville. And it wasn’t a contest.

“I wanted to come to Nashville,” she says, brushing back a strand of brown hair. “I wanted to see if I can play with the big fishes.

“I’m still swimming upstream, but at least I haven’t been eaten yet,” she says, flashing a smile that’s flavored by the love she feels for the room which has served as her musical aquarium.

“They call this ‘The House that Chet Built,’” she says, after she sits down in the control room, next to a picture of Mr. Guitar, the Certified Guitar Player who conducted world-class music and business inside this building when it was RCA’s Nashville offices.

“The first recording session here was for Eddy Arnold’s ‘Make the World Go Away’ album,” Sorrel explains. And it’s a sentiment those who love this old studio share as the world – the New Nashville of carefully-sculpted stubble, a TV soap opera and songs about bosomy girls, guns, flags and pickups (often all four of these elements) – threatens these walls.

She can’t make the world go away, but Sorrel can play a role in educating people who would destroy this treasure and make Studio A just another memory, like the long-demolished-for-progress Tally-Ho Tavern and the house where Kris Kristofferson and Will Campbell lived (both within a half-block of this building.)

Sorrel Brigman, studio manager of Grand Victor Sound, enjoys talking about the history of what was once RCA Studio A, "The House that Chet Built'' (notice Mr. Atkins' photo on the wall). The building's future is uncertain.     

-- Tim Ghianni

If this studio does disappear, Sorrel – whose sound engineer husband, Travis, works in Studio C, just down the hall – will be devastated.

She first entered this building as an intern, working her way up Folds’ staff to become an assistant engineer, sound engineer and now studio manager, booking sessions and trying to make sure music-makers have what they need to capture creativity’s intangibles.

“We had more than 200 days booked here last year,’’ she says. “I’ve been told the average studio would be happy to get eight days a month.” Hunter Hayes, Brian Setzer and Jewel were among those who hatched music here in the last year. “And that’s not to mention all the people who’ve recorded in here last year who people don’t know about yet but who they’ll be talking about in two years.

“It feels good to be a part of history here.”

She understands her refuge is inside a building on 17th Avenue South “that’s about as bland a building as possible,” and even a bit warty among the new offices and condos.

“They save the old houses where presidents were born, and those usually aren’t anything special architecturally. They just save them because of their history.” That same reasoning could be applied here, she reckons.

The men responsible for constructing this studio were more interested in shaping music than the aesthetics of brick-stacking and shiny glass foyers.

“This was built by Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley and from 1965-1977, they developed what became known as the Nashville Sound here,” says Sorrel.

“And when the Outlaw movement came along and when RCA artists like Waylon wanted to take control of their own careers and record where they wanted, Studio A was what they were rebelling against.”

Actually, of course, they were rebelling against the Nashville Sound, the stuff that became for awhile the city’s musical signature, thanks not only to Atkins and Bradley, but also to Eddy Arnold, the beloved Tennessee Plowboy who took the country genre to new heights with network TV gigs that included filling in as Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show guest host.

Ironically, Jamey Johnson, who shares the Outlaw sensibilities of Waylon and Willie and the Boys, uses Chet’s old third-floor office as his own.

Sorrel has made her domain her passion as well by continuing to research what has transpired here. Of six similar RCA studios scattered in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Rome and even Mexico, “this is the last room that is still being used as a recording studio.”

“You have to take a look around,” she says, directing the visitor to scan the two beveled walls, one grooved wall, the wood floors and the other characteristics “that leave a sonic fingerprint on the records.”

“We are raising the risk of losing that fingerprint as well as the place to do large-scale sessions,” she says, noting this room, complete with a balcony that holds a picnic table, is the largest continuous floor space in any studio in town.

On the day after this visit, a large youth chorus from the United Kingdom was going to record here. Symphonies – including Nashville’s – have and can record here.

Hey, hey – even The Monkees made music here when the Pre-Fabricated Four were coming to our town. “Back then, when acts went out on the road, they carried tape, so they would record when they came to a town where there was a studio. That’s how we got The Monkees,” Sorrel says.

While the studio name has changed, this has been a recording space for George Strait, The Beach Boys, Tony Bennett, Billy Joel and The Dave Matthews Band, just to skim a few off the top.

“Progress is a wonderful thing,” says Sorrel. “I moved here in ’09 in the depth of the recession, back when those new condos in The Gulch weren’t selling, and they practically gave them away.

“I’ve seen a lot of development. We keep getting more people here and they say how Nashville is getting so much better than it used to be.” There are more restaurants, more things to do.

But with such growth there also comes “a Catch 22 of what can be lost. If you start ‘to change’ a city, it damages itself,” she says.

Yes, she’s heard the cries of “Why not record someplace else? There are plenty of studios, here, after all.”

“But they don’t know about artistic inspiration. ... Musicians come here to use it because of its shape, the sonic fingerprint.”

Her hope is “an elegant and practical solution” will be worked out among factions of “the brain trust” tussling over issues of development versus historic import.

“To me this is a labor of love,” she says, green eyes gleaming. “I don’t know if we’d be able to replicate this room.”