If I am not mistaken you want to know how to use Archive::Tar in this way:

tar -cvf too-bad-v0.1.tar -T MYFILENAME.txt
[download]

Where the contents of MYFILENAME.txt are:

file1.txt
file2.txt
...
[download]

This feature can actually be very useful if you have a large directory but only want to recreate periodic tar-balls of certain files in it. After re-reading the perldoc I don't see that feature in my installed version. To emulate it, you can just read the contents of your file, turn the lines into an array of file names (remember to chomp), and then use the add_files() method in Archive::Tar if I am not mistaken.