Mumford and Sons shares why they met with Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts

Curious as to why Mumford and Sons met with Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts hours before the group’s April 14 show?

Apparently the band was discussing the Gentlemen Of The Road Fund, which will support “charities fighting for social justice around the world.”

The band had said before their Charlotte show that instead of canceling the show in opposition to North Carolina’s House Bill 2 as other artists (such as Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam) had done, they would instead donate all the show’s profits to an LGBT-focused fund.

In a Facebook post Saturday, the band said the fund will benefit the following “wonderfully worthy” organizations – Equality NC, an LGBT rights group; Time Out Youth, which creates a safe place for young LGBT people in Charlotte; and the Equal Justice Initiative, a civil rights campaigning group based in Alabama.

Other entertainers have canceled their North Carolina shows because of House Bill 2, which sets a statewide definition of protected classes of citizens that doesn’t include sexual orientation and gender identity. It also strikes down a Charlotte ordinance that would have allowed transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

“We respect the choices those other bands have made, but that wasn’t the right choice for us,” lead singer Marcus Mumford told the crowd at Time Warner Cable Arena.

“I think that we’ve sort of been feeling an underlying culture of fear that’s creeping into things, where we live and where you guys are, and we just want to stand and celebrate really the American values of justice and love.”

This story was originally published April 24, 2016 at 7:34 PM with the headline "Mumford and Sons shares why they met with Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts."