is it at all possible for home cooks to make good southern bbq? Will liquid smoke and some sort of sauce do the trick??

i never even heard of liquid smoke until March. I’ve used it once for beef ribs (oven-cooked at 250 for 4-5 hours) and they were definitely smoky and good. It could be that the ribs were also high quality good.
I know that pork ribs and pork is super tasty but I try hard to not have any pork in the house except for salami and occasional Italian sausage for myself. So no ribs or bacon here.