The Featherweight Live with Tiger Saw & Exit Dance Theatre

Name: The Featherweight Live with Tiger Saw & Exit Dance Theatre
Start: 2026-03-20T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Newburyport City Hall

Schedule

Fri, 20 Mar, 2026 at 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Newburyport City Hall | Newburyport, MA

7:30pm doors, 8pm performance
"The Featherweight" is a live onstage collaboration between the band Tiger Saw and Exit Dance theatre.
For over twenty-five years, the Newburyport-born Tiger Saw garnered acclaim for its minimalist, slowcore sound, establishing themselves at the forefront of the DIY, community-based New England indie folk scene. Over time, they created their own take on r&b music, a style they dubbed “Basement Soul”. In 2019, they released their seventh album, "The Featherweight", a reverent celebratory homage to 1970’s funk, dance, and soul music.
The songs were born of improvised spare, bass-heavy grooves played by an expanded lineup including horn players, vintage keys, and powerhouse backup singers. Producer Marc McElroy’s encyclopedic knowledge of funk, soul, and r&b music steered the songs into a reverent celebratory homage to 1970’s dance and soul music.
Lyrically, singer Dylan Metrano reflected on the uncertainty of living in dark, divided times. The opening cut, “Bring Out the Dead”, is a swampy tribute to the late Dr. John’s style of New Orleans voodoo funk- he first calls for us to “break your phones and shake your bones” and ultimately rallies us to “join the fight / be the light”. The album reveals its underlying theme- that we can “turn the tables on the hands we’re dealt”. And indeed, “don’t underestimate the featherweight / with eyes on the impossible”.
From its inception, Tiger Saw planned on presenting these songs in a live setting in collaboration with a dance troupe, to fully realize the full potential of the songs, and to create an immersive multimedia experience. Dance music for dancers. But that collaboration didn't get off the ground in 2019, and the pandemic halted plans to do it in 2020. For years, the band has been wanting to realize the full "Featherweight" show, as it was intended.
Now, in 2026, TIger Saw is partnering with Newburyport's Exit Dance Theatre to bring "The Featherweight" to the stage for a collaboration years in the making. Members of Exit and Tiger Saw have worked together before on various pieces, but this will be their most ambitious collaboration to date, a fully-staged live music and dance performance interpreting the songs of "The Featherweight" in front of a live audience.
Metrano has been a longtime fan of Exit Dance Theatre, and feels a real kinship with their iconoclastic approach to performance. "There's no one to be better suited to bring these songs to the stage, and this will be a truly one-of-a-kind show", he says. "This really has been a long time coming, and a dream come true. I can't wait for people to see it".
photo credit: Gordon Przybyla