Tribe of Gypsies  Tribe of Gypsies are a San Fernando Valley, California-based Latin rock group, best known for band leader/guitarist Roy Z who has produced, written for, and played with such well-known artists as Judas Priest, Rob Halford, and Bruce Dickinson who has used various members of Tribe of Gypsies to record his solo albums starting with 1994's "Balls to Picasso". Tribe of Gypsies was founded in 1991 by guitarist Roy Z after the breakup of his band Driver, then situated in the New England area. Upon returning to his hometown of Los Angeles, CA, Z decided to pursue a musical direction closer to his Latin roots and recorded a 5-song demo with the help of vocalist Robbyn Garcia and bassist Kelly Pattrik. The tape found its way into the hands of Ole Bergfleth, owner of the upstart Dream Circle label in Germany. He quickly signed the band and Z began to assemble a line-up to write and record the first Tribe of Gypsies album. He would recruit bassist Eddie Casillas, whom he had played with in Gypsy Moreno, percussionists Doug van Booven and Mario Aguilar, drummer David Ingraham, and singer/flutist David Young after former Neverland vocalist Dean Ortega had declined an offer to join the group. Keyboards on the album would be supplied by Richard Baker (ex-Santana), Greg Shultz (ex-Driver), and Michael Baum, a one-time member of Swiss extreme metal pioneers Hellhammer. During the early stages of mixing the album with Shay Baby at producer Keith Olsen's Goodnight LA Studios, the band parted ways with Young and replaced him with the aforementioned Ortega who accepted a second offer to join and would re-record all vocals. While Shay Baby was mixing the Tribe's album by night, he was also working as an engineer with Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson by day who was in town working on a follow-up to "Tattooed Millionaire". By chance Dickinson heard some of the Tribe mixes and was blown away by what he heard and took the band to Iron Maiden's managers, Rod Smallwood and Andy Taylor, who signed them to their Sanctuary roster. A deal was devised to buy out the album from Dream Circle and a worldwide deal was struck with Mercury/PolyGram. Meanwhile, Dickinson would completely scrap his album and write a new batch of songs with Roy Z and utilize most of the Tribe members as his backing band for what would become "Balls to Picasso".