I tried to pipe tar to dd and use dd to write to tape in order to have progress:
export TAPE=/dev/nst0
tar -b 128 -c *| dd of=$TAPE bs=65536 status=progress
However I got an error
tar: /dev/nst0: Cannot open: Device or resource busy
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar dd by themselves write just fine to the drive.